Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/154

128 when the turbulence of armed conflicts had scarcely subsided, when ancient prejudices had not yet cooled, when the bitterness of the war was still fresh and when the hope of other solutions was still lingering among the Southern people, it was most deplorable indeed, but not at all surprising, that great disorders should have occurred. No such changes have ever been made in any free country without such disorders; and it was the business of statesmanship to deal with them. It was a great problem and perhaps the most critical in the history of this country, for it was to overcome resistance and disturbance by means sufficiently effectual without at the same time developing an arbitrary spirit of power dangerous to our free institutions.

When the Constitutional amendments fixing the results of the war and the status of the different classes of society had become assured, there were two methods presenting themselves to you to accomplish that end. One was suggested by the very nature of republican institutions. It was to trust the discovery and the development of the remedies for existing evils, as soon as the nature of circumstances would permit, to that agency upon which, after all, our republican Government must depend for its vitality, namely, the self-government of the people in the States. It was to inspire that local self-government with healthy tendencies by doing all within your power to make the Southern people, not only those who had profited by the great revolution in acquiring their freedom, but also those who had suffered from it, reasonably contented in their new situation. Such a policy required an early and complete removal of all those political disabilities which restrained a large and influential number of white people from a direct participation in the government of their local affairs, while the colored people were exercising it. That policy did, indeed, not preclude the