Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/462

428 The question to be decided put itself to Congress in a very simple form: If for the harmony and peace of the Republic it is necessary to establish free labor in the South, and to secure and develop it through the operation of self-government, you must not put the political power, the right of suffrage, into the hands of pro-slavery people who do not want free labor, excluding from it a majority of those who do want free labor. If you want to establish democratic government in the South, and to prevent the return of aristocratic class rule, you must not confine the right of suffrage to one class, but you must extend it over the masses of the people without arbitrary distinction. And, finally, assuming a sincere devotion to the fundamental principles of our government to be the essential condition of true loyalty to the Republic—if you want to have loyal governments in the South, you must not appoint disloyalists, by habit and disposition, to lord it over the loyal men, but enable the loyal men en masse to counteract the power of those who are inclined to be traitors. Such were the considerations by which Congress in its reconstruction policy was governed. Are they not as logical and self-evident as the rule of three? Can conclusions be more imperative? The manner in which Congress acted upon these conclusions was equally simple. First, it kept the whole rebel country under the immediate control of the National Government, through its military arm, for the purpose of restoring the disturbed order of society, of protecting persons and property, and of enforcing rights and redressing wrongs, where no other efficient means for that end could be found. Then Congress called upon the people of the South to form State constitutions in harmony with the new order of things, and to rebuild upon that basis their State and municipal governments. Congress called upon the Southern people, I say; not like Mr. Johnson, upon one class of the people, and