Carl Schurz

“ Johnson's friends never call it an outrage when the Rebels keep Union men out of office because they are Union men?
Show me in the history of the world a single example of a great rebellion, the suppression of which was attended with such mildness and magnanimity. If there were any proof wanted to demonstrate the greatness of that magnanimity, it would be found in the fact that the same men whose lives were forfeited by the law and who but yesterday escaped the halter, are vociferously complaining of our cruelty because we do not just yet want them to rule us to-morrow. ”

“ And now we behold the President of the United States prostituting the whole power of his office, by using it as a machinery of intimidation and bribery, putting up at auction the patronage of the Government, the price to be paid in consciences, and leaving, as he himself says, his Presidential dignity behind him — indeed, he leaves it so far behind that the two will never again come together — promenading his bad grammar and his clownish egotism across the country, to bully a brave and noble people into acquiescence ”

“ Then it became certain again, to my mind, that the great people of the New World, who fought a four years battle of conscience, have not forgotten their exalted mission on earth, and that the very gates of hell cannot shake their mighty determination to wield, with a firm hand, the national power, until justice is done to all, and until, with safety to all, the Republic can be set afloat upon the broadest channel of self-government. ”

“ Who does not know that a great civil war is subject to the same rules of public law as a foreign war? Is it not a principle of common sense, as well as a principle approved by every publicist of note since the world has had a literature, that the victor in a civil war, as well as in an international conflict, has a right to protect himself against immediate and prospective danger? ”

“ Suppose this offer be made, is it not probable that a good many of those who are willing to sell their souls for a post office, will take it and vote for the assumption of the Confederate debt? To refuse anything to a Southern man is already a task of tremendous difficulty to a Northern doughface; but to refuse that something with a million attached to it, would not appear to most of our Johnson men an unjustifiable act of vindictiveness, calculated to alienate the hardly reconciled feelings of our erring, but now so sweetly repentant brethren. ”

“ He would rather have suffered himself to be burnt at the stake than to break or endanger the pledge he had given to the Southern Union man, when he called upon him for assistance, and to the negro soldier, when he summoned him to the field of battle; and if he could rise from the dead and walk among us to-day, we would see him imploring mercy upon the accursed souls of his assassins But even his large heart, with its inexhaustible mine of human kindness, would have no prayer for those who strive to undo, or culpably suffer to be undone the great work which was the crowning glory of his life. ”

“ It is that, however proper, just and necessary the provisions of the constitutional amendment may be, the Government has no right to make its ratification a condition precedent to the readmission of the Rebel States; they always have been States; they have never ceased to be States; they are States now, and as such they are entitled to all the rights and privileges of other States. I will not follow our opponents into a metaphysical disquisition on the nature of a State, for it is not necessary for the purpose of proving the utter absurdity of their position. ”

“ There is a fierce contest going on between the executive and legislative branches of the National Government, in which the masses of the people are called upon to take sides. In the South, we see symptoms of dangerous fermentation sporadically breaking out in bloody deeds. In the North, the war of opinions is carried on with passionate violence. A gathering of men, euphoniously styling itself “The National Union Convention,” has already called upon the people of the South not to submit, if the policy adopted by the Congress of the United States should prevail. ”

“ It is true the first golden opportunity after the victory of our arms, when we might have accomplished with ease what now may cost us the fiercest struggles, that first great opportunity has been treacherously frittered away, never to return; but it is not too late yet. A faithful Congress is still guarding the key position of the battle-field, and nobody need despair as long as behind a faithful Congress there stands a faithful people. ”

“ The immediate and unconditional restoration of the Rebel States to the absolute control of their home affairs and to power in the General Government was so obviously incompatible with the best interests and sacred obligations of the Republic, so manifestly against all common sense, that when one of the greatest heroes of the war, led astray by a too generous error of judgment, admitted it as one of the stipulations of an armistice, the people, startled out of their equanimity by the mistake, raised a general outcry against him all over the loyal States. ”

“ Is it possible that men with any pretensions to sanity should attempt to deny the justice of a principle so self-evident; a principle equally approved by common sense and public law? That President Johnson should ever have taken so absurd a position I can explain only upon one theory. He frequently tells us in his unfortunately not unfrequent speeches that he commenced his political career as a village alderman, at Greenville, Tennessee, and that he then rose, step by step, until he reached the Presidency of the United States. ”

“ Look over the history of the world, and you will find that every great reformatory movement in society, every revolution in favor of popular rights, every sudden onward stride in the progress of civilization, has had to pass through two distinct periods — first, the struggle for its achievement, and then the struggle for the preservation of its results; the first, the period of action; the second, the period of reaction.
When the struggles of the first period are over, and the victory seems decided, the discomfited forces of society gradually wake up from the torpor of their defeat ”

“ No man insisted more strenuously that the participants in the Rebellion must be punished and stripped of all political power and social influence, and that the Government of the States, as well as of the nation, must be confided exclusively to the tried and ever-faithful friends of the Republic. ”

“ But I dare to assert that every truthful man who knows what has occurred in the South, will testify that if the official statements I have made convey erroneous impressions at all, they do so only by their studied mildness. My report has not had the good fortune of winning the applause or of exercising an influence upon the mind of him who sent me; but I console myself with the confident belief that in this country no individual, however powerful, can seal the eyes of the people by merely closing his own. ”

“ No sooner did the people lately in Rebellion see the road to political power reopened to them by the President's reconstruction policy, than they malignantly turned upon those Southern men who had refused to espouse the cause of the Rebellion, and those Northerners who, during and after the war, imported into the South their capital, intelligence, enterprise and civilization. ”

“ When the conqueror has subdued a hostile nation, he may, if prudence so require, render her incapable of doing mischief with the same ease in the future. * * * If the safety of the State lies at stake, our precaution and foresight cannot be extended too far. Must we delay to avert our union until it becomes inevitable? ”

“ What they would be most in favor of would be just to pay no debt at all. But the creditors of the late Confederate Government would indeed be very much in favor of giving some value to their Confederate bonds, and being the most influential men of the South, they will not find it difficult to persuade the Southern masses that if any debt is to be paid at all the Confederate debt is entitled to payment as well as any other, if not even more. Who doubts that the people lately in rebellion will be very well convinced of this? ”

“ Is it not perfectly proper and just that if a people of a State exclude the negroes from the right of suffrage, they should not have the advantage of counting them in the basis of representation — an advantage which would give one Rebel soldier in South Carolina three times as much political power as is wielded by a Union soldier in Massachusetts. ”

“ Can it be that in the great struggle for the Union, the tried and self-sacrificing Unionists of the South are the worst defeated party? Shameful, incredible as it may seem, yet so it is. Under the heels of the Rebellion when the Rebellion broke out, they are still more under the heels of the Rebels since the Rebellion is vanquished ”

“ The President not long afterwards declared himself against the Constitutional amendment; and we see Mr. Raymond, in his address laid before the Philadelphia Convention, inform the Southern people that they would be cowards and unworthy of freedom if they submitted to so cruel an outrage. Ah, there is virture in the Johnson men! They resist the South? How many of the renegade Republicans are there who have not time and again given the lie to their professions of the day before, and who do not now every hour eat up their own words along with their “bread and butter?” ”

“ That period of reaction after our glorious victory for national Union and human liberty has now come upon us, and it is the more formidable and dangerous as one of the great powers of the State has made himself its agent and champion. ”

“ Nor does the reaction stop there. Hardly had the President's policy had time to be understood when a malignant spirit of hostility began to follow the Northern emigrant in all the relations of life. Every man was spotted who refused to sell his loyal principles along with his calico; and the Southern Union men in the same measure, as they had been faithful to the Government, were sneered at, howled at, spit upon as traitors to the Southern cause, and soon found themselves the outcasts of Southern society. ”

“ President Johnson took the work of reconstruction into his own hands, and began to develop a scheme of policy. He issued proclamations appointing Provisional Governors for the Rebel States, and ordered them to call State Conventions. Was not the work of reconstruction to be placed exclusively into the hands of loyal Union men? Of course it was; Andrew Johnson had said so! He had solemnly declared that if there were but five thousand men of tried loyalty in a State, theirs must be the Government. ”

“ I believe that to place the government of the late Rebel States upon a reliable loyal foundation, you must enfranchise all the loyal men, black as well as white, thus effecting a safe reconstruction of the whole Republic by enlarging the democratic basis of our political system. ”

“ But political power in the States naturally belongs to those who have the right to vote and to be voted for. Andrew Johnson began by prescribing the qualifications of voters. The loyal blacks were at once excluded from the suffrage; the right of voting was to be confined to the loyal whites. But who were the loyal whites? The President issued a proclamation of amnesty, and decreed that all participants in the Rebellion should be regarded as loyal men if they would take the oath of allegiance, fourteen specially enumerated classes excepted. ”

“ Look the matter square in the face. Here is a Congress of which the Southern men and Northern Johnson men form a majority; for such is the design of our opponents. The Southern delegations are there, unshackled by any of the constitutional amendments now before the people. As a matter of course, the test oath will at once be repealed. The South loudly demands the repeal; the President is in favor of it; and such being the case, where would the Johnson men find spirit enough to refuse it? ”

“ Truly it did not require a bold and daring genius or profound statesman at the head of affairs to seize it. It required simply a man of sincere sympathy with the best ideas of this great age: not a great man, but merely an honest man. ”

“ Every Southern man will tell you that the Southern members, with the exception of a few from Tennessee and perhaps Arkansas, will be a solid unit upon that very question; and, in fact, if the Rebel States be readmitted unconditionally, such as they are, will it not be natural? How many thousand millions they will demand, who knows?
Next in order come the pensions paid to disabled soldiers and sailors, and to the widows and orphans of those who lost their in the struggle against the rebellion. ”

“ In the life of nations, as in the life of individuals, we see here and there standing out in bold relief, moments of great opportunity — moments when by simply following the manifest logic of events mighty consummations may be reached, which, if the auspicious hour be suffered to pass, it will sometimes require ages of bitter and dangerous struggles to accomplish. ”

“ The defeated party presently rallies for an attempt to recover what it has lost, the victors are off their guard, and the results of the victory are again put in question. These results will be safe only if the victors have been wise enough to have them firmly imbedded in political forms or institutions so well fixed and fortified that the tide of the reaction, however furious, cannot shake or move them. ”