Page:Visit of the Hon. Carl Schurz to Boston, March 1881.pdf/55

42 kind friend,—their benefactor; the one leading man who had proposed and put on trial at last the one hopeful method for future experiment by our nation, for justice, mercy, and peace between us and the native tribes. Our guest has honorably and nobly linked his name and repute with this new policy. He has the sympathy and confidence of all the humane and right-minded of our whole people in it. The nation may be won to it. And there is every reasonable prospect that it may prove to be the means of redressing the fearful sum of wrongs and treacheries chargeable upon the nation in its dealings with the aborigines. Yet I think that a word of explanation—though not of palliation—may be spoken for our Government.

I had shared to the full the popular impression which has so often found a sharp and stinging utterance, that the course of our Government, through its full century, toward the Indians, has been treacherous, unscrupulous, malignant, and inhuman. A weary course of thorough study and investigation for a special purpose, pursued through the whole mass of State documents,—for nearly a hundred volumes of which I have been indebted to our guest,—has led me to qualify and relieve that bitter judgment, so far, at least, as any set object, or planning, or intent of wrong is concerned. I grant that, in fact, in effect, and with painful accumulations of evidence, such has been the humiliating and often unscrupulous and cruel character of the