Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/371

Rh the restoration of the Union become less desirable, less necessary? Why, then, your opposition?

Your Democratic Convention at Chicago, which may be said to have represented all elements of the opposition party, has given us a reason. By a unanimous vote it declares that the war is a failure, and that, therefore, hostilities must be stopped. Good. But what is now to be done? Will you give up the Union? No, your Convention declares that the Union must be restored. If so, and the war having failed to do it, some other agency must be found out which will be more effective—and, indeed, the Chicago Convention tells us that, if we wait to restore the Union, peaceable means must be resorted to. But what assurance have you, that, war having failed, peaceable means will succeed? Have the rebels told you so? No. They have declared a hundred times, with terrible emphasis, that no concession ever so liberal, no persuasion ever so seductive, will induce them to return to their allegiance. I defy your Democratic leaders to show anything to the contrary. Or did the Democratic Convention base their hopes upon any precedent in history, where a power, against which the experiment of war had proved a failure, yielded and surrendered all it had been contending for with arms, to the meek and humble appliance of coaxing? There is none. It is against common sense; it is against human nature. But what in the world, then, did they base their confidence in the efficiency of peaceable means upon?

The matter resolves itself into this: If the war is a failure, mere entreaty is hopeless, for the rebels have nothing to fear if they refuse. If you want entreaty to succeed, you must make the war succeed first, for your strength is the only thing upon which your entreaty can stand. But your leaders tell you that you must abandon the experiment of war, and restore the Union by peaceable