Carl Schurz

“ You have no true interests of your own which are not the interests of every other citizen. Does not every patriotic instinct tell you it is time, and indeed, it is best for you, as it is best for all of us, that at last you should sink the Confederate in the citizen; that you should not keep alive distinctions which cannot be cultivated without injury to yourselves and to the common good; that as citizens you should make the public welfare your only object in political life, and at last throw off those partisan shackles which hinder you in doing so? ”

“ It is to be hoped that by this time the people of the South have learned that those who disgrace them by deeds of bloody violence are their worst enemies. Let them act upon that lesson. Let them dissolve their white men's leagues; for every organization based upon a distinction of color is not only wrong in itself, but harmful to both races. Let them make the poor negro feel that he has not only a willing, but an active, protector in every good citizen. ”

“ I invite you calmly to consider the nature of the power which the government thus exercises. To increase or diminish at will the purchasing power of every dollar you hold in your possession! To run up or down the price of every article of merchandise you have to sell! To make smaller or larger the size of every piece of bread and meat you are able to buy for your families! To make ruinous either to yourselves or the parties with whom you have contracted, the performance of every contract you have made! To raise or lower the real amount of every debt you owe or due you! ”

“ Is it not well and necessary that those who still speak of “ceaseless yearnings for revenge” should be emphatically informed by our votes that, in the opinion of the people of Missouri, the war is over; that the people want those who once were enemies to be friends again, that in such a spirit they mean to enforce peace, order and impartial justice, and that they look upon every one who now, by insidious appeals, attempts to revive the old passions and resentments of the civil conflict as a reckless disturber, as an enemy of society? ”

“ If they succeeded in carrying such a measure as they advocate through Congress, not only would they cheat the creditors of the government, but they would, by that act of repudiation, strike a blow at the credit of the American people, from which for more than a generation we would not recover. Do we not want as much foreign capital as we can attract, to help us build our highways of trade and develop our untouched resources? Already our credit abroad has suffered severely enough from the failure of not a few of American corporations to perform their promises. ”

“ Is it not necessary that we should put the power of the Government in the hands of men who will vigorously wield that power to punish and suppress brigandage and murder with a relentless hand, men who, unmoved by local sentiment or partisan bias, will lift up the authority of the law from its disgraceful impotency, and will make the officers of the law do their whole duty without fear or favor? ”

“ But if it fails, then greater than ever will be the danger—not of monarchy or imperialism, but that by a sort of dry-rot our institutions may gradually lose their vitality; that our time-honored Constitutional principles may be obliterated by abuses of power establishing themselves as precedents; that the machinery of administration may become more and more a mere instrument of ring-rule, a tool to manufacture majorities and to organize plunder; and that, in the hollow shell of republican forms, the Government will become the football of rapacious and despotic factions. ”

“ But there is another kind of anarchy, which is just as dangerous to republican institutions and to the welfare of the Nation as the lawless self-help by force of individuals and parties. It is the anarchy of power. It is the lawlessness of authority. If you want the people to respect and obey the laws, convince them that those in power do not wilfully disregard them. If you want republican government to stand, let the government be one emanating from the people and moving strictly within constitutional forms. ”

“ But we, at least, my fellow-citizens, conscious of serving a good cause, will go forward with unfaltering courage and determination. Let the little tricks and squirmings of partisan spite or speculation, filling with noise the air around you, not disturb your equanimity. They have not repressed the People's movement in its rise, they will not hamper it in its progress. Every blow of intrigue or malice that was aimed at it has brought to its ranks scores of honest men whom we welcome with pride. ”

“ The farmer justly complains of the extortions practiced upon him by certain transportation monopolies; he justly complains of the injurious effects of the protective tariff; but full as grinding, nay, more so, is the oppression inflicted upon him by a vicious currency. It is astonishing how many farmers and planters are still deluding themselves on this point. But it is to be hoped that they soon will rise to a just understanding of their true interests, and, with one voice, demand what alone can protect them against the most subtle kind of robbery, an early restoration of specie payments. ”

“ It would deprive the national government of a most dangerous and despotic power, which puts the private fortune of the citizen at its mercy. It would relieve the business community of that most intolerable condition, which makes everybody tremble when Congress meets for fear that every business arrangement be upset and every value be changed by new currency legislation—a condition of things keeping the whole business community in an incessant fever of anxiety. ”

“ Public opinion hung like a thunder cloud over Washington, charged with dangerous electricity, and some of those who tried to construct the famous press-gag law as a lightning rod wish to-day they had never made the attempt while the people in conventions, and still more, at elections, are sitting sternly in judgment over those of their servants who cannot present a clean bill of health. ”

“ Let in their places be put men of wisdom, conscience and honor, who will set them an example of high official integrity and public spirit, and disabuse them of the idea that whatever they may do as partisans of those in power, the aid of the National Government will always stand behind them.
Still more can the colored people themselves do for their own protection; and here, I think, is the way to solve the most difficult part of the problem: They cannot too soon give up the delusion that they will be safe only as long as they remain together in the same political organization. ”

“ Let the American people once more remember that it is the duty of every citizen first to be a patriot before being a partisan. Then we shall cease to stumble from blunder into blunder, and that enlightened statesmanship will not fail to appear, which by courageous action will scatter the clouds now hanging with threatening gloom over the Republic. ”

“ And I declare myself in favor of honest government and of the security of every human being in the South in his life, property and rights, even if it should cost Kellogg and Moses every particle of political power they possess. And I hope the time is not far when every good citizen in the country, to whatever party he may belong, will be of the same opinion. ”

“ I do not lay any stress on the fact that a certain class of the same men for whose political rights and privileges we rose up in 1870, and who then pressed our hands, called us their saviors and deliverers, and extolled to the skies the virtue of our moral courage for the right and our political independence, now, when we act upon the same principles, find no insinuation too mean and no abuse too gross to vilify us before the people in press and speech. ”

“ True there are more homicides in some of the Southern States and more brigandage in Italy. But I insist that whatever may be the condition of other States and countries, here in Missouri there is altogether too much of it; that it has prevented the immigration of farmers to our prairies; that it has discouraged orderly people who like the rule of law better than knives and revolvers from settling in our country towns; that it has depreciated the value of our lands; that it has hindered the progress and prosperity of the State, and that it is a dishonor to the whole Commonwealth. ”

“ Bankers have really had scarcely any thing to do. Nobody seems willing to borrow money if he can possibly help it. Economy is the order of the day—certainly a most healthful and hopeful condition of things, but it leaves the bankers with their vaults full of idle funds.”
All this goes to prove that there was a super-abundance of currency far beyond the actual requirements of business, but at the same time a lack of confidence which prevented the use of it, while the majority in Congress insisted that the business of the country was starving for want of more money. ”

“ But utterances of this kind have a demoralizing effect, for they divert the minds of men from the true problem, which is not how to get rid of democratic government, but how to restore and develop what is good in it and how to suppress or reform what is bad. Thus they cultivate that barren, inert, imbecile despondency which, seeking escape from an evil, is always apt to choose the worst—a state of mind utterly unworthy of an American. ”

“ Nobody will deny that a debt must be paid according to the original bona fide understanding between the debtor and the creditor. Can anybody sincerely believe when, amidst the terrible uncertainties of the war the government called upon its own citizens and those of foreign countries to lend it their money and take its bonds, a single man would have done so had he seen the least reason to fear that the government would redeem those bonds not with real dollars, but with depreciated due bills? ”

“ Indeed, if ever, now is the time to call away not only from Louisiana, but from South Carolina and all the Southern States, or to strip of their official power, the multitude of Federal officeholders, who have looked upon themselves as mere party agents, using all their influence to sustain and strengthen the bloodsuckers desolating that country, and probably not in many cases oblivious of their own profit. ”

“ And I am rejoiced to learn that the number of colored citizens who emancipate themselves from the serfdom of party discipline, and who counsel with their white neighbors on their political action in order to secure good government, is growing larger from year to year. When it will have grown so large that the colored voters become an important element, not only in one, but in both parties, under an impulse of self-interest, each party will rival in affording them the fullest measure of protection. ”

“ I have now been well-nigh twenty years more or less active in public life, and so often have I seen the same men cover me with obloquy one day and with lavish praise the next, so often have I been killed stone-dead politically and risen up again fully alive, that I can speak from experience: He who walks his path with unswerving fidelity to his convictions of right has nothing to fear. ”

“ Men who assiduously persuaded the negroes that their only safety was in a strict organization as a race against the Southern whites, and in blind obedience to the behests of their commanders; men who used that organization only to raise themselves to power, and who used that power for the spoliation of the people; men, who, in many cases, after having filled their pockets with spoil, sneaked off to a place of safety, leaving behind the poor tools of their iniquity as victims to the exasperation of plundered and outraged communities. ”

“ It is the idea that an expansion of our currency means a general distribution of money by the government among the people, especially those who need it; that if anybody has not money enough to start an enterprise or to carry on his business as he desires, he has only to hold out his hand to the government, and it is at once filled with a pile of greenbacks ”

“ Nothing will benefit the country more than putting an end to that vicious currency system which feeds so dangerous a demagogism, and will only strengthen so demoralizing an influence on society the longer it is continued. A return to specie payments will convince every man in the country once more that honest industry is the only reliable source of wealth; that he who contracts a debt must expect to pay it himself, and he who wants to get on in the world without trouble must earn more than he spends. ”

“ You, honest Republicans, who, as sincerely as I, desire the protection of the poor negro and the suppression of violence, would then readily admit a fact which is as clear as sunlight, that the government of the Republican carpet-bagger and plunderer in the South, as a protection to the negro and the Union man, has been a most glaring and disastrous failure, and that in the very nature of things it must be so. ”

“ There is the indisputable fact that there is the same amount of currency as before the crisis; that the banks have for a year been full of money, and that so much of it lies unemployed. Why is it that, even after the liquidations which have taken place since last September, the general stagnation continues virtually unchanged, that business can not get a new start, and does not at present even show a prospect of improvement? Why do not confidence and enterprise revive? ”

“ That they should have fallen under the control of reckless and designing men, when, ignorant as centuries of slavery had left them, they entered upon the exercise of political rights, is by no means astonishing, especially when we consider that the Southern whites, their late masters, at first maintained an attitude of hostility to their new rights, while some of those designing friends appeared in the character of Federal officeholders, a character carrying with it an authority which the colored people were wont to look upon as the very source of their liberty. ”

“ Houses becoming more productive, new ones would have been built. The paralysis would have passed away, life, activity and energy having taken its place, all these wonderful effects having resulted from the simple pledge of the one sufficient man that he would see the contracts carried out. He had pledged his credit, and nothing more. And what the man could do in the case here supposed, the government through its Congress could do to-morrow, if it had nerve enough and strength enough to put its master aside and declare for the liberties of the people against the perverted ideas of the despot. ”