Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/460

426 rights of others, a correct appreciation of the spirit and tendency of this age and common-sense generally.

In saying this I am not indulging in mere speculation. In 1865 and 1866 we had occasion to witness the doings of the Southern legislatures, elected by the Southern whites, under the auspices of Mr. Johnson's policy. The results are before us as matter of history. And what are they? No sooner did the master-class feel in possession of authority and power again than it sought at once a chance for a reaction in the direction of its old pro-slavery notions, and it availed itself of that chance with refreshing alacrity. Here vagrance laws were enacted calculated to tie the colored laborer to his late owner by the most arbitrary legal obligations. There the negro was forbidden to acquire real estate and thus to have a home for himself and his children. In another place contract laws were devised compelling the colored man virtually to sell himself for a certain specified time under severe penalties. In still another State the old slave code was boldly restored to force, and so on. Is that free labor? And after all this, Andrew Johnson, in one of his messages, congratulated the country upon the fact that the Southern people had done even better than he had expected. Heaven knows what his expectations may have been; they must have been even worse than mine. But what did all this prove? It proved that the Southern whites, instead of securing and developing free labor, endeavored only to find a new form of slavery, another peculiar institution. Instead of placing society upon a democratic basis, they sought only a new foundation for aristocratic class government. I repeat, these are not mere speculations. These are hard, incontestable facts; but facts which might easily have been foreseen. “Lead us not into temptation,” is the text of the prayer. But the gift of exclusive power to the Southern whites was bound to