Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/140

116 is in Mr. Cleveland's favor. That the means of force and of fraud employed to keep the negroes in certain States from voting were in themselves of evil, goes without saying—notwithstanding the circumstances adduced to excuse such practices. But the difficulty is now solving itself as well as it can be solved, and the only thing needed is that it be let alone. Every well-informed and candid man will admit: (1) that the efforts to suppress the negro vote arose mainly from the fear of negro domination; (2) that this fear was stimulated and in a certain sense justified by the unexampled profligacy of most of the so-called carpet-bag governments during the reconstruction period; (3) that the fear of negro domination subsides whenever the negroes cease to vote as a compact mass on the side of one party and divide their votes among the different parties controlling the elections. As soon as that is done, the different parties bid for the vote of the negro as they bid for the vote of any one else, and vie with one another in protecting him in the exercise of his rights. This process is now going on and will soon remove the trouble in a perfectly peaceable and orderly way.

The only thing that threatens to prevent the consummation of this salutary development is the desire of Republican politicians to reunite and secure the whole negro vote for the Republican Party again, and thus to capture some of the Southern States. This end is to be served by what is commonly called the force bill. Although this measure is nominally to provide only a machinery of control for Congressional elections, it is looked upon, not unnaturally, as another attempt to organize, with the aid of the national power, the negro vote again as a compact and obedient party engine for general party purposes. The inevitable effect of the enactment of the force bill or anything like it would be the revival of the fear of negro domination in the South,