Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/406

372 into peaceful and mutually beneficial relations under a new order of things, so that the weaker might be permanently safe in the presence of the stronger. That was the perplexing task to be accomplished. Was it to be done by the constant interposition of a superior power? That would have been putting off indefinitely the restoration of local self-government in the Southern States. Was it to be done by at once restoring the States to their functions, leaving all the political power in them exclusively in the hands of the whites? That would have been surrendering the late slaves, emancipated by the act of the National Government, helpless to the mercy of their former masters, whose natural desire at the time was to reduce them to slavery again. Was it to be done by arming the late slaves with political rights so as to give them the means of self-protection, and by curtailing at the same time the political rights of the late master-class, so as to weaken their means of aggression? That would expose those States to all the evils of a rule of ignorance. Thus neither of these systems, nor any mixing of them, could in all respects have worked satisfactorily as to immediate consequences. But here I have to do only with actual results.

The great mass of negro voters fell promptly into the hands of more or less selfish and unscrupulous leaders, and the scandals of the so-called carpet-bag governments followed. The Southern whites might, perhaps, have exercised a stronger influence for good upon the negroes had they at once frankly and cordially accepted the new order of things. But the old passions and prejudices did not yield so quickly, and, moreover, I repeat, President Johnson's ill-advised doings had inspired them with delusive hopes of some sort of reaction. It would be wrong to class all who during that period—from the close of the war until 1877—acted as Republican leaders in the South