Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/288

The doubt and agony of the Southern mind as to what was to be, would have been cruelly prolonged; the whole country would have been kept in a state of feverish agitation; and, finally, what would have been the result? Not the gradual, steady and peaceful advancement of the emancipated class toward the position they now occupy, for their education would have been strenuously resisted, and only fitful and jerking experiments would have been made in the heated atmosphere of political struggles; not the establishment of a system intermediate between slavery and free labor, for about one thing nobody should indulge in any delusion—the people of the North would have uncompromisingly resisted any attempt to subvert or adulterate free labor in any form, and the tendency to strengthen the powers of the General Government for that purpose would have been irresistible. No, the final result would have been just this: The South would have remained the scene of persistent, violent, fruitless, disastrous efforts to baffle the logic of things; the energies of her people would have been wasted in useless and self-tormenting attempts to escape the inevitable and to accomplish the impossible; the confusion and agony of an uncertain state of things would have been indefinitely prolonged; the whole country would have been kept in anxiety and alarm by the reagitation of the old questions; the power of the National Government would have been increased beyond all measure at the expense of local self-government; and finally, after all this, we should, by the very necessity of all things, have been forced to fall back upon just that settlement which has actually been adopted. And why? Because in a republic a social and political organization, based upon equal rights, is the one which most naturally suggests itself; it is the only possible, the only tenable one, for it is the only one in harmony with truly republican institutions and genuine self-government.