Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/373

Rh But your leaders tell you, you must distrust the bulletins of the War Department, and that many of those great victories are nothing but electioneering tricks. It is a sorry policy, indeed, which forbids you to believe in your country's glory. [Applause.] Electioneering tricks! The capture of Atlanta was a capital electioneering trick, I own it. [Shouts of laughter.] No more consummate trickster on record than Phil. Sheridan! [Repeated laughter.] Electioneering tricks, indeed! I apprehend, if your Democratic candidate for the Presidency had played a few electioneering tricks of that description, the election returns from Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio might have been different, and the late commander of the Army of the Potomac would have no reason to stand in mortal fear of the soldiers' vote! [Loud applause.]

But I am willing to let your leaders have the full benefit of their representations. If they refuse to trust the bulletins of the War Department, will they permit themselves to doubt also the veracity of one of their own highest authorities, Jefferson Davis himself? [Laughter.] See, then, Jefferson Davis dolefully perambulating the little remnant of his tottering Confederacy; hear him most plaintively bewail his disasters; hear him say that the hope of the Southern cause hangs upon the women and the little boys and the old grey-beards, since the stock of young men is exhausted, and since two-thirds of their soldiers have run away from their colors! Did you read the speech Jefferson Davis delivered at Macon? And now, when even he, who is certainly not in the employ of our War Department—when even he tells us by implication that the end is near; when even he shows us how great a success the war is on our part, what excuse is there left for your Democratic leaders to declare the war a failure? [Loud applause.]

Let us be honest, my Democratic friends. Neither you