Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/285

Rh States for several months—not with any desire to harrow up old sores; nothing could be farther from my mind. But I desire, in justice, to say that the attitude of the Southern people at that time was the natural result of their situation. After the terrible disasters and the bewildering changes, which had taken place with such stunning rapidity, we had no right to expect anything else. But were we not obliged to face the truth, and to act accordingly? I ask again, what would you have done under such circumstances? Would you have left the Unionists living in the South and the freedmen, after having emancipated them and promised to protect them in their freedom, would you have then left them unprotected, at the mercy of resentments and passions, inflamed by past disasters, and present sufferings and perplexities? Think of it. I appeal to you as Southern gentlemen, who pride yourselves upon your honor: if you had been victorious and conquered the North, would you a single moment have forgotten your obligations of honor to those who had aided you in the struggle, and were then living among your late enemies, unable to protect themselves? You would have gone further, perhaps, than we. Let your own feelings as gentlemen sit in judgment.

And further, what would you have done towards establishing and securing free labor in the South? Would you have left the business with confidence to the late master-class, who, although slavery had been struck down in the war, were quite naturally still acting upon the traditional conviction that only the old system was rational and tenable, and that the new system could not and would not work? Would you have expected that, if all political lights and privileges were left in the exclusive and untrammeled possession of the master-class, they would be used for anything else than the restoration of, as much as possible, the old system of slavery? Would you have