Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/428

394 by national Democratic success, will bring about a better local feeling between the two races, and also be the means of producing division in the ranks of the party that is now held together by fear and race prejudices. That Democratic success will benefit rather than injure the negro race is fast making itself manifest to every thoughtful reader of the signs of the times. Too much politics and not enough of the other substantialities of life has done the race more harm than Democratic opposition.

This, no doubt, expresses the general sentiments of educated colored people in the South. It means the end of race politics. But it does not mean the end of negro voting. About this, too, the orator here quoted had something to say:

Hereafter the negro, in casting his vote, will be governed by his immediate interest. If A, a Democrat, runs for office against B, a Republican, he will not vote for B, simply because he is a Republican, nor for A, simply because he is a Democrat; but he will vote for the one who will do that which will be to his interest. No one can call this ingratitude on his part, for he has more than paid the debt of gratitude he owed the Republican party for his freedom.

Indeed, the phrase that the debt of gratitude to the Republican party was more than paid, I heard from so many colored men in nearly the same language, that it seemed almost as if the word had been passed around among them. This simply signifies a strong tendency among the negroes of the South to go over to the Democrats, and to put themselves in accord with “their white neighbors and friends.” Many of them openly avow this intention.

The consequences will inevitably be what they always are under such circumstances. In most of the Southern States the Democratic party will be substantially without