Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/428

394 and as by the emancipation of the slaves the representation of the Southern States will be largely increased, there will be more representative men of the South in Congress, and their power will be greater than ever before. Will the increase of their power be calculated to render them more modest in their pretensions?

Next in order comes the breaking down of all Congressional legislation for the protection of the emancipated slaves. All the obstacles which stand in the way of their reducing the freedmen to some sort of servile subjection will again be overturned without delay. The repeal of the Freedmen's Bureau and the civil-rights acts will be considered a matter of course; and it will give President Johnson, the modest man who would not be a dictator at any price, particular satisfaction to get rid of that power which enables him to protect the rights of the lowly children of the Republic, and which, for that reason, perhaps, he considers so dangerous a temptation. Woe to the negro, then, who, upon the solemn promise given by the Nation, attempted to be a freeman! Thrice woe, then, to the colored man who, when the country in the hour of danger called him under arms, took up his musket and with gallant devotion staked his life for the life of the Republic! All the pent-up resentments which the disastrous struggles and the bitter disappointments of years have accumulated in the Southern heart will come down upon his doomed head without restraint or moderation, and the Government for which he had sacrificed his blood will have withdrawn its protecting arm from him, and he will stand there a bloody monument of American treachery.

Next in order will come the demand of compensation for the Emancipated slaves and the damage done by our armies while operating against the rebels in the Southern States. Does anybody doubt that such extravagant