Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/303

Rh of their last stock in trade by doing that which is best for yourselves? There is no surer way for you to secure your rights, to strengthen your friends and disappoint your enemies, than in gaining the confidence of all honest men by well-doing.

But now I encounter the objection that in many of the Southern States the colored people, forming a large portion of the voting body, are blindly following the lead of unscrupulous and rapacious demagogues, and that this circumstance would render such a combination as I advocate in many respects powerless. I appreciate the greatness of that difficulty, but am equally certain that it can be overcome. I shall state my opinion without reserve. It is certainly true that so-called carpet-bag government has in many instances been most scandalous. That the colored people should to a great extent have fallen into the hands of unscrupulous demagogues is very sad, but not at all wonderful to me. Something more than their inexperience in public affairs was the cause. After their emancipation and enfranchisement the colored people very naturally felt great anxiety about their new rights. Before them they saw the old master-class disgusted with the new state of things, and maintaining an attitude of seeming or real hostility to those new rights. On the other hand they saw before them men loudly and ostentatiously promising to protect them. Was it astonishing that the colored people should have thrown themselves into the arms of those in whose keeping they believed their new rights secure? Would it not have been different had the Southern whites at once frankly and without reserve recognized and protected the new rights of the enfranchised class, thus gaining their confidence?

You will tell me that this could hardly have been expected, under the circumstances, and I admit that. But what was not done then, may it not be done now?