Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/419

Rh Constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery; but he left it to them to fix by State law the social and political status of the emancipated slaves, thus to reduce them to slavery again in all but the name, and to prevent the development of free labor.

There the President stopped. These demands partially complied with, he pronounced the rebel States fit to be restored to their full Constitutional rights and privileges, and declared himself satisfied; and not only that, he insisted that he being satisfied everybody else should be satisfied also, and presently he declared everybody a traitor whose satisfaction was not complete. But the late rebels were indeed satisfied. In their most sanguine dreams they had never expected such magnanimity—a magnanimity which put the Nation's friends at the mercy of the Nation's enemies! They were indeed satisfied; and no sooner had their satisfaction inspired them with the desire to give cheers for Andrew Johnson than their gratitude went so far as to couple them with cheers for Jefferson Davis.

The reactionary movement chose for its first objective point persons obnoxious to the rebel element; first, the freed negroes; and then, as the President's policy gradually developed itself and became more encouraging, the white Union men of the South and Northern settlers. The South had fought for slavery; the emancipation of the slaves was for the rebels the most grievous result of their failure, and every freed negro reminded them of their defeat. Against the freedmen, therefore, the first fury of the reactionary movement directed itself. At that period I was myself in the South, and I know of what I affirm. I myself visited the hospitals and the prisons; I myself saw the lifeless bodies, the mangled limbs, the mutilated heads, of not a few of the victims. I myself listened to their sorrowful tales and those of their friends.