Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/408

374 effect of which was that persons unable to read, and thus to identify the boxes, would be apt to lose their votes—an arrangement working somewhat like a disqualification of illiterates. In still other places efforts were made to influence the negro vote as it is influenced here and there in the North. Thus, while at the beginning of the reconstruction period the negroes were enfranchised and a large number of whites disfranchised by law, which brought forth Republican majorities and the carpet-bag governments, subsequently the negro vote was in a large measure neutralized, first by force and then by trickery, thus, by means wrong in themselves and eventually demoralizing in effect, making Democratic majorities to put an end to the carpet-bag governments, prevent the return of negro domination and secure honesty in the administration of public affairs.

There has been, concerning these facts, much crimination and recrimination between the North and the South, partly just and partly unjust. “By your reconstruction acts,” said the South, “you subjected us to the rule of ignorant and brutal negroes led by rapacious adventurers, who mercilessly plundered us at the time when the South, exhausted and impoverished, was most in need of intelligent and honest government.” “We could not help that,” answered the North, “for we were in justice bound not to leave the emancipated negro helpless at the mercy of his former master; we had to arm him with rights, and if you had been in our places, you, as an honorable people, would have been bound to do, and would have done, the same thing.” “You have terrorized voters,” said the North, “and controlled the ballot-box by force and fraud, and thus got political power which did not belong to you.” “We could not help that,” answered the South, “for the government of combined ignorance and rapacious rascality stripped us naked, and