Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/416

396 believe in the purity and unselfishness of our intentions could we hope to regain their affection.

Let us see what was done by the Administration and the ruling party. The great social revolution grown up out of the war had resulted by logical necessity in the enfranchisement of the colored people. Only by the exercise of political rights can the free laborer maintain his independence. But the colored voters, untutored and inexperienced, fell under the leadership of unscrupulous adventurers. I do not say that this could have been entirely prevented. It was one of the usual consequences of great social revulsions. But its effect might well have been limited in time and extent by a wise policy. As it was, a system of robbery and ruinous misgovernment ensued which has hardly a parallel in history. Most of those States were, with incredible rapidity, burdened with enormous debts without any equivalent. Scores of millions disappeared as by magic, in the capacious darkness of private pockets. Impoverished as those States were by the war, they were now stripped naked. The public expenses became absurdly extravagant, the taxes unbearable. Under such loads industry was discouraged and flagged; enterprise sank down with hopeless despair; production diminished; and incredible as it may seem, while the rest of the country was prosperously progressing, the value of property in many of those States appeared in the census of 1870, after five years of peace, far below the figures exhibited by the census of 1860. Such have been the effects of so-called carpet-bag government in the South.

Who was responsible for this? Those governments were, and are at this moment carried on in the name and under the auspices of the Republican party. It was through them that the Southern people felt the touch of the ruling power. It was in them that they saw its