Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/426

392 demonstration. And the frontier tone still prevailing in the sparsely-settled districts of the South is apt to make such demonstrations peculiarly rude. There is but little, if any, difference between the North and the South as to the sentiment prevailing about such things in what may properly be called the best society, for a gentleman of genuine self-respect will never fear any danger for his dignity in meeting with people of ever so lowly a station, or in respecting their rights.

It has frequently been asserted, and probably not without reason, that on the whole the colored race meets with more cordial kindness among the white people of the South than among those of the North. The difference may be defined thus: In the South more kindness, in the North more justice. Kindness is warm, but arbitrary; justice is cold, but impartial. I am, however, inclined to think that, but for the low moral and intellectual condition of the plantation negroes, and the dread inspired by their number, and the race-antagonisms on the political field, the general relations between the colored people and the whites would indeed be more satisfactory, more agreeable, in the South than in the North, and I believe that as the negroes become better educated, and as the change in their political attitude takes place to which I shall refer below, their “civil rights” will, even without further legal machinery, find fully as much protection in the South as in the North, and perhaps more.

The election of a Democratic President has been to the negro a great blessing, for it has delivered him from two dangerous delusions: one, that the success of the Democratic party in a National election would make him a slave again, and the other, that by acting together as a race the negroes could wield in politics a controlling influence with much profit to themselves. They know now that their freedom is assured whatever party wins, and