Carl Schurz

“ Do not indulge in the illusion that in order to make a government free and liberal, the only thing necessary is to make it elective. When a political party in power, however liberal their principles may be, have once adopted the policy of knocking down their opponents instead of voting them down, there is an end of justice and equal rights. The history of the world shows no example of a more arbitrary despotism than that exercised by the party which ruled the National Assembly of France in the bloodiest days of the great French Revolution. ”

“ If, therefore, this having been made clear, any European power chose to countenance the Southern Confederacy, it could do so only with the distinct understanding that it was taking sides with the cause of human slavery in its struggle for further existence and dominion. What European government depending to any extent on the approval of public opinion would—cotton or no cotton, commerce or no commerce, war, long or short, victory, certain or uncertain—range itself on the side of human slavery in the face of the moral sense of civilized mankind? ”

“ This general identity of interests is the only thing that can guarantee the stability of democratic institutions. Equality of rights, embodied in general self-government, is the great moral element, of true democracy; it is the only reliable safety-valve in the machinery of modern society. There is the solid foundation of our system of government; there is our mission; there is our greatness; there is our safety; there, and nowhere else! This is true Americanism, and to this I pay the tribute of my devotion. ”

“ Every fiber of our being trembles with eagerness for the greatest of struggles. Every pulsation of our blood beats the charge. We place one of the purest, noblest, and ablest men of the nation at the head of our army. Victory is within our grasp. And now there stand some who call themselves patriots, mouthing like children that they cannot do as much as they would have done, if their particular favorite had been nominated for the presidency! ”

“ And the billows of passion will lash the sides of the ship, and the storm of party warfare will bend its masts, and the pusillanimous will cry out, ‘Master, master, we perish!’ But the genius of true democracy will arise from his slumber, and rebuke the winds and the raging of the water, and say unto them: ‘Where is your faith?’ Aye, where is the faith that led the fathers of this Republic to invite the weary and burdened of all nations to the enjoyment of equal rights? ”

“ The new birth of a united German national empire, the abolition of arbitrary government by the introduction of free political institutions—that was the solemn promise of the Prussian king as the people understood it—that was the hope which inspired the people in the struggle against Napoleonic rule with enthusiastic heroism and a self-sacrifice without limit, and ended in a final victory. It was one of the periods in history when a people proved itself ready to sacrifice all for the attainment of an ideal. ”

“ But half a century elapses and this free government is ruled by a despotic interest; the Republic sinks into the mire of slavery and corruption, and the hope of humanity sinks with it. The advocates of despotism predict its downfall from day to day, and proclaim with exultation that the great experiment of human self-government has failed. It is in vain that the best men of the nation, like the prophets of old, rise up against the growing demoralization. ”

“ Of the more aggressive—I might say belligerent—type was Senator Toombs of Georgia, a large, strong-featured head upon a massive figure, his face constantly alive with high spirits, as capable of a hearty, genial laugh as of a mien of anger or menace; his speech rather boisterous, always fluent and resonant with vigorous utterances. Nobody could be more certain of the sanctity of slave property and of the higher civilization of the South. He would bring the North to its knees; he would drive the anti-slavery men out of public life ”

“ Indeed, it certainly was not party spirit that determined my course, for my deeply grounded distrust of party tyranny over the human conscience put me on my guard against any undue influence from that quarter. But this campaign for an election to a judicial office was an anti-slavery campaign—a campaign against one of those arrogations of power on the part of the “slaveocracy” which offended our moral sense, insulted the dignity of manhood, and struck at the fundamental principles of democratic government, by denying to the alleged fugitive slave a fair trial by jury. ”

“ The cause I advocated seemed to me self-evidently right and just—the cause of liberty, of human rights, of free government, in which all men had a common and equal interest. I advocated that cause with arguments the correctness of which I was profoundly convinced of and which I thought must irresistibly appeal to the reason and the sense of justice and the patriotism of every fair-minded citizen. The same cause was advocated by a large number of high-minded and patriotic men who for this purpose had cut loose from their old party associations. ”

“ So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible of the high compliment of a re-election, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be pained or disappointed by the result. May I ask those who were with me to join with me in the same spirit towards those who were against me?” When I read those noble words, which so touchingly revealed the whole tender generosity of Lincoln's great soul, the haggard face I had seen that evening in the cottage at the Soldiers' Home rose up vividly in my memory. ”

“ Such a notion of honor which consists only in cheap show induces one too easily to forget that the moral courage of a man who unflinchingly and unselfishly stands up in the struggle of opinions and of interests for that which he recognizes as true and right, rises far above all the glories of the dueling-field and all its pretended heroism. It is a matter of experience that not a few of the most bellicose students, devoid of just this genuine and higher courage, become the most servile sycophants of power in later life, always parading the scars on their faces as proof of their bravery. ”

“ The Twenty-ninth advances, firing, and behind it, sword in hand, we rally the broken regiments. The routed men present a curious spectacle: some fierce and indignant at the conduct of their comrades; some ashamed of themselves, their faces distorted by a sort of idiotic grin; some staring at their officers with a look of helpless bewilderment, as if they did not understand what had happened, and the officers hauling them together with bursts of lively language, and an incidental slap with the flat of their blades. ”

“ In my judgment, gradual, not sudden emancipation, is better for all. Such a proposition on the part of the government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. In the annual message last December, I thought fit to say: ‘The Union must be preserved; and hence, all indispensable means must be employed.’ I said this, not hastily, but deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable means to this end. ”

“ Indeed, I have, I am sorry to say, lost much of the Latin and Greek that I knew when I was at the gymnasium. But the æsthetic and moral impulses that such studies gave me, the ideal standards they helped me in erecting, the mental horizons they opened to me, I have never lost. Those studies are not a mere means for the acquisition of knowledge, but, in the best sense of the word, an element of culture. And thus they have remained to me during my whole life an inexhaustible source of elevating enjoyment and inspiration. ”

“ I would listen to him by the hour when in his rhapsodic way he talked of Russia and the Russian people, that uncouth and only half conscious giant, that would gradually exchange its surface civilization borrowed from the West for one of national character; the awakening of whose popular intelligence would then put an end to the stolid autocracy, the deadening weight of which held down every free aspiration; and which then would evolve from its mysterious depths new ideas and forces which might solve many of the problems now perplexing the Western world. ”

“ Who will deny that in the face of the uprising of the whole people in arms, a grand solemn uprising, the crown would have been urged upon the path of progress, without civil war? Yes, if all were true that is asserted in the indictment, if we had really conspired to oppose force to force, if we had armed ourselves to storm an armory, if we had put arms into the hands of citizens for such an enterprise, even then, yes, even then, we would, after a defeat, be only unfortunates, but not punishable culprits. We would have done it, not to destroy a constitution, but to support one that was attacked ”

“ He stands before my eyes now as he entered the Brüning salon and took his seat near the fireplace: a man of a little more than thirty years, of sturdy figure, a face of dusky paleness with black mustache and goatee, the dark eyes glowing with piercing fire. He spoke in a deep, sonorous voice, slowly and measuredly with dogmatic assurance, waving off contrary opinions with a word of compassionate disdain. With the greatest coolness he explained to us his own theory of the revolution, which simply provided that the contrary minded without much ado be exterminated. ”

“ It will, indeed, not be denied that at the beginning of our Civil War there were magnificent demonstrations of enthusiastic and self-sacrificing patriotism on the part of the people, that the war itself abounds with heroic acts, and that it produced the great results of a saved and strengthened Union, the abolition of slavery, and an invigorated consciousness of national power. But it was not the war that created the enthusiastic and self-sacrificing patriotism of the people. That patriotism existed before the war, and would have existed without it. ”

“ To the young Republicans, of whom I was one, the threatened danger of defeat in the doubtful States had little terror, for we had the utmost faith in the invincible moral power of our cause, aided as this was, in addition to its intrinsic moral strength, by the bitter quarrels in the Democratic party. To call that moral power into the most effective action, the boldest course, the most resolute appeal to the love of liberty, and to the generous impulses of the popular heart, seemed to us the policy surest of success. ”

“ It cannot be! No man in whose soul glows a spark of sympathy with struggling humanity can now stand idle. No heart that ever was fired by the divine breath of liberty can now remain cold!
“Let Wisconsin stretch her hand across the great lakes and grasp that of New York. Let it be known that New York and Wisconsin, who stood together to the last for Seward in the convention, will be the first and foremost in the battle for Lincoln and Liberty!” ”

“ It is said that there are but few men who, however honest otherwise, can withstand the seductions of power. If this is true, what effect must it have upon political leaders when they see that, in point of principle and political practice, they can do with the masses whatever they please? When they find out that they will be obeyed and applauded whatever their command may be? That they may sell themselves and sell others without being rebuked? That they may even squander the money and rob the treasury of the people without being held to account? ”

“ Two or three times during the year, in accordance with ancient custom, all assembled in the folk-hall for a romp; blindman's bluff and other games were played, and there was no end to the tumbling and pulling, shrieking and laughing, until, at a fixed hour, the foreman stalked in, like stern fate, and sent them all off to bed.
Such were the surroundings in which I first became aware of existence, and in which the earliest years of my childhood were passed. It is remarkable how memory can hark back to the time of the first development of consciousness. ”

“ On the whole, the things that I saw and heard made the West exceedingly attractive to me. This was something of the America that I had seen in my dreams; a new country, a new society almost entirely unhampered by any traditions of the past; a new people produced by the free intermingling of the vigorous elements of all nations, with not old England alone, but the world for its motherland; with almost limitless opportunities open to all, and with equal rights secured by free institutions of government. ”

“ I had seen the slave power officially represented by some of its foremost champions—overbearing, defiant, dictatorial, vehemently demanding a chance for unlimited expansion, and, to secure its own existence, threatening the most vital principle of free institutions, the right of free inquiry and of free utterance—aye, threatening the Union, the National Republic itself. ”