Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/420

386 I will not go into details. I will not attempt to draw the veil from that dark drama of blood and horror which makes the heart sick; for if ever the history of the countless murders and acts of fiendish persecution then perpetrated in the South should be traced and told, case after case, a picture of atrocities would reveal itself to the eyes of the world—a picture so revolting that the nineteenth century would blush for itself, and it would seriously be doubted whether it were best for humanity to take that country from the savage Indian and surrender it to the more barbarous rule of white men who call themselves civilized.

I say I was myself in the South shortly after the close of the war and when the President's policy was bearing its first fruits. President Johnson had honored me with a confidential mission to investigate the condition of things in the late rebel States, and I endeavored to show myself worthy of that confidence by honestly reporting what I had seen and heard and what I conscientiously understood to be true. Subsequently it appeared to me as if I had misunderstood the nature of my mission. But I dare to assert that every truthful man who knows what has occurred in the South will testify that if the official statements I have made convey erroneous impressions at all, they do so only by their studied mildness. My report has not had the good fortune of winning the applause or of exercising an influence upon the mind of him who sent me; but I console myself with the confident belief that in this country no individual, however powerful, can seal the eyes of the people by merely closing his own.

I have heard it said that the acts of barbarous persecution to which the freedmen were, and, for aught I know, are still exposed, were merely isolated occurrences, and do not authorize general conclusions. Can it be that in a community where public opinion stigmatizes the murder