Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/365

Rh at that place, “the citizens of the town are so prejudiced against the negroes that they are opposed to all efforts being made for their education or elevation”; that “the people will not give rooms or allow the children of their hired freedmen to attend the schools,” and that the citizens of the place have written a letter to the officers, saying, “that they would respectfully ask that no freedmen's schools be established under the auspices of the bureau, as it would tend to disturb the present labor system, and take from the fields labor that is so necessary to restore the wealth of the State.” It seems Dr. Murdoch's neighbors do not form an exception to the general rule. In this connection I may add that several instances have come to my notice of statements about the condition of things in the late rebel States, being set afloat by Southerners visiting the North, which would not bear close investigation. The reason, probably, is that gentlemen are attributing their own good intentions to the rest of their people with too great a liberality.

Having thus given my experience and impressions with regard to the spirit actuating the Southern people concerning the freedman and the free-labor problem, and before inquiring into their prospective action, I beg leave to submit a few remarks on the conduct of the negro.

The first Southern men with whom I came into contact after my arrival at Charleston designated the general conduct of the emancipated slaves as surprisingly good. Some went even so far as to call it admirable. The connection in which they used these laudatory terms was this: A great many colored people while in slavery had undoubtedly suffered much hardship and submitted to great wrongs, partly inseparably connected with the