Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/108

82 more States than Louisiana. It was when Federal officeholders in the South were permitted to use their authority and prestige as a power in partisan conflicts, and for the support and perpetuation of partisan State governments the most rapacious and corrupt that ever disgraced a republican country. It was when the countenance of the dominant party was not promptly withdrawn from the thieves who buried the Southern States under mountains of debt, and, filling their own pockets, robbed the people of their substance. It was when the keeping of the Southern States in the party traces was deemed more important than that they should have honest and constitutional government. That wrong is not remedied by military interference and the subjection of revolutionists.

Nor was that the only wrong committed in the South. There was another, and on the other side. It was when bands of lawless ruffians infested the Southern country, spreading terror by cruel persecution and murder. It was when helpless prisoners were slaughtered in cold blood. It was when neither officers nor volunteers could be found to arrest the perpetrators of such bloody deeds, or no juries to convict them. It was when the better classes of society contented themselves with condemnatory resolutions and pious wishes, instead of straining every nerve to bring the malefactors to justice. I know it is said that many of the bloody stories which reach us from the South are inventions or exaggerations. That may have been, and, undoubtedly, in some cases was so; but we know also that very many of them were but too true, and that they cannot be explained as a mere defense against official robbery, for the murdered victims were mostly poor negroes, while the real plunderers went free and safe. We know also that there is a ruffianly element in the South which, unless vigorously restrained