Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/305

Rh admit that they are not to blame for it. The evils springing from that circumstance I appreciate. How can they be remedied? Certainly not by killing and whipping negroes in the Ku-Klux style, using misgovernment as a plea of justification, just as little as similar evils in New York could be cured by killing or whipping poor Irishmen on account of the rapacious misrule of Tammany. By such doings things are made only worse. No; the best way to neutralize the evils growing from popular ignorance in States like yours is to establish and enforce an efficient system of public education, and I am sure whatever preconceived opinions may still stand in the way of this idea, the Southern people will, in the long run, not fail to recognize that, although it may have appeared good for a slave to be ignorant, it is certainly good for a freeman to be intelligent and well informed. It is educated, intelligent labor that free-labor society demands. I have frequently been told that colored people can not be educated up to as high a standard as white men. Without going into an argument on that point, I will merely observe that some people, of whatever race, can not be educated up to as high a standard as others; but it is the evident and imperative interest of free-labor society, and of a republican community, that every human being should be educated up to as high a level as he can reach. And in promoting popular education, I see another great blessing which the movement I am advocating might confer upon these States.

What other obstacle can there be standing in the way of a combination promising to bear such beneficent fruit? There is one which ought to be easiest to overcome, but is, perhaps, the most formidable. It is party spirit. How will such a movement affect the chances of the Republican or the Democratic party? I am sure, as soon as the subject is suggested, this question will be uppermost in