Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/483

Rh in these professions of friendship for the colored Democrat. The Southern chivalry, with characteristic candor, ask the confiding negro for his vote that they may disfranchise him afterward. “Be my friend, colored brother, and give me power that I may rob thee of thy rights.” I do not think that this game of deception is particularly chivalrous; but whatever the ultimate designs of the Southern Democrats may be, it will, under the present circumstances, have a good effect. This is not the first time that the devil, without knowing it, has served the church. The Southern Democrats indulge in the delusion that by means of the negro vote they can carry some of the late rebel States, and thereby defeat the Presidential candidate of the Republican party. For this purpose they fervently embrace the negro in order to squeeze Democratic votes out of him. Perhaps they have reason to chuckle over this or that colored man who has gone into the trap. But the calculation of the Southern Democrats is wrong in one important point. We have votes enough in the North to elect Grant and Colfax. The Democrats will not have the power to disfranchise the negroes again, and in the meantime the Southern chivalry is gradually falling into the habit of embracing the colored brother to obtain his vote—all of which is very proper. As soon as by another Republican victory the reconstruction policy of Congress has once become an irreversible fact, so that the colored population can not again be stripped of its rights, it will not matter how large a proportion of the negro vote goes to the Democracy; for the great cause of free labor and equal rights will then have achieved a decisive triumph by the mere fact of the negro having become a universally recognized voter, and each party bidding for his vote by supporting his rights and interests.

The rights of the emancipated class being out of danger, the negro vote will then naturally divide itself between