Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/304

284 If much misgovernment was caused by the delay, may not now much evil be prevented by wise, although tardy action? Are the colored people so inseparably bound to the unscrupulous demagogues among their leaders that they cannot be cut loose? I do not believe it. There are too many intelligent and honest men among them, and they are rapidly learning something. Look around you. Are not a great many of the colored people becoming aware of the mischievous use that has been made of their confidence? Are not the thieves everywhere falling out among themselves, and fiercely fighting each other? Is not so-called carpet-bag government everywhere on the point of breaking down? And the only strong bond which still binds many of the colored people to the unscrupulous among their leaders, consists in those very acts of lawless violence which make them afraid, and which, by a united effort, you can suppress. Can such a united effort fail to relieve the colored people of their fears, and to command the support of a great many of them? Such complications are not peculiar to the South, or to political communities in which the colored people constitute a strong element. Look at what is going on in New York. The Tammany robbers are no carpet-baggers, and their constituents are no negroes. But the bags of the Tammany men are ten times bigger with plunder than any bags in the South, and their Democratic followers have supported them through thick and thin, with more stubborn obedience than you observe in the colored voters. What happens? Finally the honest men take courage and unite, the citizen begins to rise above the partisan, and they are in a fair way to overcome difficulties of more intricate a nature than would stand in the way of the united law and order men of the South. That a large number of voters in the South are uneducated, ignorant and inexperienced, I readily admit, and you certainly will also