THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
of the Southerners, especially of the young men among them, an assertion of aristocratic superiority, apparently quite sincere, which strained the patience and self-control of their opponents to the utmost. It was the cavalier against the roundhead. The very atmosphere was quivering with challenge, and many a time an outbreak of violence seemed inevitable. In the affronts that were so freely flying about, a tone of bitter personal animosity was evident. Indeed, Mr. Potter told me that the feeling of being colleagues which formerly had prevailed between Northern and Southern men, as generally between members of different parties in Congress, had largely disappeared, that the rancors and spites of the political struggle had invaded their social relations, that among many even the customary greeting had ceased, and that they would meet one another with glowering and fiercely hostile looks.
I had to leave Washington the next day, and I took the conviction with me that the day of compromise was indeed past, and that, not as a matter of spirit but as matter of policy, the North should meet Southern defiance with a demonstration of courage and determination. If the South should be confirmed in the expectation that, whenever threatened by the South with a rupture of the Union, the North would make any concession or abandon any demand however righteous, there would be no end of threatening. To disarm that threat, nothing would avail but a cool acceptance of the challenge. The South had to be taught that slavery would be kept out of the Territories then free—for that was the practical issue—even at the risk of a conflict, and if the Southerners thought, as they did, or at least pretended to do, that Northerners would not fight, the Northerners had to convince them that they would fight, if they must, and that this case of necessity would be presented by any attempt on the part of the South to break up the Union.
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