Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/415

Rh is no less decided. However desperately they may have fought against emancipation, but few men can now be found in the South who would restore slavery if they could. It is said that there are some, but I have not been able to find one. The expression: “The war and the abolition of slavery have been the making of the South,” is heard on all sides. It is generally felt that new social forces, new energies, have been called into activity, which the old state of things would have kept in a torpid condition. There is, therefore, no danger of another pro-slavery movement. The relations between the colored laborer and the white employer are bound to develop themselves upon a bona-fide free-labor basis. Of the social and political relations between the two races, something more will be said below.

The distrust among Northern people as to the revival of loyal sentiments in the South, while in some cases honestly entertained, has in others been cultivated for political purposes. The question is asked: “Why, if they are loyal, do they select as their representatives men who were prominent in the rebellion? What about their reverence for Jefferson Davis?” and so on. Every candid inquirer will find to these questions a simple answer: In the “Confederate States,” a few districts excepted, nearly all white male adults entered the military service. They were all “rebel soldiers.” When after the war the Southern people had to choose public officers from among themselves, they were in many places literally confined to a choice between rebel soldiers and negroes. In other places they were not so confined. But they followed the natural impulse of preferring as their agents and representatives men who really represented them, who had been with them “in the same boat” in fair weather and in foul. This companionship in good and ill fortune has in all ages and in all countries been a strong