Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/409

Rh threatened us with complete ruin. No people could have endured this. We had to get rid of negro domination at any cost, and if you had been in our places you would have done the same thing.”

While this discussion was going on, a non-political but most powerful influence asserted itself. The Southern people got to work again. Immediately after the war the average Southerner was laboring under the impression that the emancipation of the slaves had brought the whole economic machinery of the South to a complete standstill, and that, unless some system of compulsory labor were restored, there was nothing but starvation and ruin in the future. Encouraged by President Johnson's erratic manifestations, he made all sorts of reactionary attempts, but failed. He had, after all, to try what could be done under the new order of things, and he did try. Gradually he discovered that the negro as a free man would work better than had been anticipated. He discovered also that white men could, and under the pressure of circumstances would, do many kinds of work to which formerly they had not taken kindly and readily. As work proved productive, hope revived, and with hope, energy and enterprise. The Southern man became aware that his salvation did not depend upon a reversal of the new order of things, but upon a wise development of it. He found that this new order of things was opening new opportunities and calling into action new energies. So his thoughts were more and more withdrawn from the past, with its struggles and divisions and resentments, and turned upon the present and future with their common interests, hopes and aspirations. While the professional politicians of the two sections were still storming at one another, the farmers, and the merchants, and the manufacturers, and the professional men, had found something else to occupy their minds. Many of