Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/423

Rh restoration of slavery. The latter belief had been industriously kept alive by Republican politicians and colored preachers, and was much more generally entertained among the negroes than might be thought possible. In fact, as soon as the result of the late Presidential election became known in the South, very many of the former slaves went to their former masters to offer themselves anew for service.

Of this fear the colored people are now thoroughly cured. They looked upon the Republican party as the natural protector of their freedom, and upon that protection as necessary to them. They have now discovered that this necessity no longer exists, and that, as to their freedom, they need not be afraid of the Democrats. This experience has set a good many of them to thinking about some other things, especially about their social status, and the means by which to improve it.

There are two different standards by which to judge the treatment the negro receives in the South: one is a comparison with the treatment white people mete out to one another, and the other is a comparison with the treatment the negro receives at the North. Applying the first standard, we find the difference undoubtedly very great in all those relations of life which are not effectively regulated by law. But comparing, in this respect, the South with the North, the difference will be found small, and it is accounted for in a great measure by the obvious difference in the mental and moral condition of the colored people, and their significance in the social body at the North and the South respectively. The Northern negroes have, with few exceptions, been freemen all their lives, and their parents before them; most of them are tolerably well educated, and they form only a small percentage of the population, so small, indeed, that as a constituent element of society they are scarcely