Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/164

138 the same result in Georgia also, and that the same motives which produced a change in the political attitude of whites may have acted also upon the blacks. Is not this possible? Why not? But I ask you, sir, what kind of logic, what statesmanship is it we witness so frequently on this floor, which takes the statistics of population of a State in hand and then proceeds to reason thus: So many colored people, so many white, therefore so many colored votes and so many white votes; and therefore so many Republican votes and so many Democratic votes; and if an election does not show this exact proposition, it must be necessarily the result of fraud and intimidation and the National Government must interfere. When we have established the rule that election returns must be made or corrected according to the statistics of population, then we may decide elections beforehand by the United States Census and last year's Tribune Almanac, and save ourselves the trouble of voting.

Intimidation of voters! I doubt not, sir, there has been much of it, very much. There has been much of it by terrorism, physical and moral, much by the discharge of employés from employment for political cause, but, I apprehend, not all on one side. I shall be the last man on earth to say a word of excuse for the Southern ruffian who threatens a negro voter with violence to make him vote the conservative ticket. I know no language too severe to condemn his act. But I cannot forget, and it stands vividly in my recollection, that the only act of terrorism and intimidation I ever happened to witness with my own eyes was the cruel clubbing and stoning of a colored man in North Carolina in 1872 by men of his own race, because he had declared himself in favor of the conservatives; and if the whole story of the South were told it would be discovered that such a practice has by no means been infrequent.