Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/35

Rh Scott decision with his face towards Charleston, and then to territorial squatter sovereignty with his face towards Springfield. [Cheers.] Look at that disgusting, pitiable exhibition of a man who boasts of his greatness as a statesman with a thundering voice, and who is short-sighted enough not to see that, like a boy, he has fallen into the meshes of that eternal contradiction from which his pettifogging sophistries will never extricate him. [Thundering applause.]

Such has been the fate of squatter sovereignty, and of the man who invented it. And such will be the fate of all measures which, at the same time, concede to slavery the right to spread, and to liberty the right to restrict it. So long as our national laws countenance slavery in any way beyond that measure of right which it derives from the local legislation of the States in which it exists, the agitation and the war will be the same, and no compromises, and no mock popular sovereignty will allay the struggle. It will be repeated over and over again as often as, and wherever, slavery has the slightest chance to intrude. All such measures, which embody both the antagonistic principles, are like a railroad train to which two locomotives are attached, one at each end. The name of one is Liberty—the name of the other, Slavery. If the two locomotives pull in different directions, what will be the consequence? Either the superior power of one will pull the train, together with the other locomotive, in its direction, or, the strength of both being equal, they will tear the train to pieces. And I tell you all measures like the Nebraska Bill will be torn to pieces by the different constructions put upon them.

What else, therefore, is Douglas's “great principle,” but a wild delusion? What else is his policy, but a dangerous imposition? It speaks of harmony, and yet it pre-