Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/43

Rh a musket, and who will fight too. [Repeated cheers.] Let them come on, then, the bragging cavaliers of the South! The Northern roundheads stand just ready for them. [Thundering applause.] Calm your warlike enthusiasm; if they are wise, they will not come. The first attempt at a forcible dissolution of the Union will show them the madness of the undertaking.

What will the South do then, if this policy prevails? I do not say that the slaveholders will at once submit, cheerfully and gracefully. They will certainly give their lungs a hearty exercise in the finest figures of speech, and in the most brilliant exclamations. They will predict fearful things, although they may not be over nice concerning the time when these fearful things are going to happen. [Laughter and cheers.] But after a while will they not stop and listen to what the North may have to say? Suppose, then, the North were to speak to them as follows: Friends, we love and esteem you as citizens of a common country. As citizens, you enjoy every right that we enjoy, and whatever legitimate ambition you entertain, there is an open field for it, in this our common Republic. But, as we claim no privileges for ourselves, we are unwilling to concede any to others. If you want to curb our necks under the yoke of your peculiar notions; if you want to adapt the laws of the land to the sole purpose of the protection of the slaveholding interest; if you make any pretensions, or claim any superiority, as a slaveholding aristocracy, you will expose yourselves to grievous disappointment. There is a solid phalanx arrayed against the arrogations of slavery beyond the limits which the Constitution and history have assigned to it. Now, this is your choice: either govern this Republic with us, as citizens on perfectly equal terms, or, as a slaveholding aristocracy, submit to the doom of