Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/402

368 Twice during the last twenty years I had occasion to travel extensively over the Southern States, and to become acquainted with their condition. In 1865, a few months after the close of the civil war, I visited all of them, except Texas and Florida, and last winter all of them, except Mississippi. Each time I came into contact with a great many persons of all shades of social position and of political opinion. I improved my opportunities of inquiry and observation to the best of my ability. My object was, not to verify the correctness of preconceived notions, but to gain, by impartial investigation, a true view of things. Of the view thus obtained these pages are to give a brief and plain account. C. S.&emsp; , April, 1885.

In 1865, immediately after the close of the civil war, Southern society presented the spectacle of what might be called a state of dissolution. The Southern armies had just been disbanded, and the soldiers, after four years of fierce fighting, had returned home to shift for themselves. The Southern country was utterly exhausted by the war. Even where there had been no actual devastation, the product of labor had, ever since the spring of 1861, been mostly devoted to the support of armies in the field—that is, economically speaking, wasted. The money in the hands of the people had become entirely valueless. Thus the people were fearfully impoverished. The slaves, who had constituted almost the whole agricultural working force of the South, had been set free all at once. The first and very natural impulse of a large number of them was to test their freedom by quitting