Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/424

390 of any consequence. While there are in Southern towns not a few negroes comparing very favorably with those we see in the North, a large part of the colored population of the South consists of plantation hands, a class of persons entirely unknown in the Northern country. Emancipation found many of them only a few removes from absolute barbarism, and no educational efforts could have lifted them very high above that state in one generation. The colored population, with such elements in it, forms in some of the Southern States a majority, in others a strong minority of the people, heavily preponderating in certain geographical districts. The negro in the South is, therefore, a very different being from the negro in the North in point of quality and of quantity, and of his practical relations to the interests of society. As to the spirit in which the negro is treated the two sections correspondingly differ somewhat, but not very much. As a matter of fact, there is among the white people of the North as well as of the South a wide-spread feeling that the two races do not belong together. In neither of the two sections do they, therefore, mingle socially upon an equal footing. But as to those public accommodations and conveniences, the equal enjoyment of which is usually put under the head of “civil rights,” a difference in the treatment colored people receive is perceptible between the North and the South; it is, however, mainly one of degrees, and not very great. Neither is the treatment of negroes the same in all the Southern States. I have travelled with negroes—I mean colored persons travelling independently, not as servants accompanying their employers—in first-class railway cars as well as street cars, not only in the North, but also in the South—in some Southern States at least. In Georgia the railroad companies have to provide for the colored people separate cars, of the same quality, however, as furnished