Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/198

Those who try to put a pleasing face upon the homicidal practice by speaking of it as owing to high spirits of the “descendants of the cavaliers” in the South, seem to forget that an overwhelming majority of the descendants of that race of cavaliers live not here, but in England; and that, it may be supposed, the best of the cavalierly spirit has descended upon those of the native soil, together with their names, their escutcheons and their family traditions—at least as much as upon the side lines in the Southern States. But the descendants of the cavaliers in England have become civilized in the same way as other people of this century. They have undoubtedly retained a good deal of pride of ancestry, and in most cases a lively sense of honor. But while they have their disputes and quarrels like the rest of us, we do not hear of any shooting and stabbing among them. In fact, if any member of their order should try to demonstrate his cavalierly spirit and his quickness to resent an insult by whipping out a revolver on every occasion, or by going after an enemy with a shot gun, they would look upon him as an unmitigated ruffian, entirely unworthy of their society, and they would have him tried and hung if he actually killed anybody. In this civilized century that man is regarded as the finest cavalier who most conscientiously reveres the sanctity of the law, shows the most just and generous spirit in the treatment of his fellow-men, maintains his dignity by abstaining not only from all mean but also from all brutal things and cultivates the highest graces of civilized life. If the high-spirited young men of the South desire to take rank among the modern descendants of the cavaliers, and to become themselves true cavaliers of the nineteenth century, they will quickly drop—together with their antiquated notions of chivalry—their revolvers and their shotguns as protectors of their honor and as their badges of nobility.