Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/141

Rh and, with it, a violent and disastrous disturbance of the relations between the two races, which in the course of time had shaped themselves in a friendly manner highly advantageous to the general prosperity.

Consider what this means. The South came out of the civil war impoverished and desolate. The sudden abolition of slavery put it through the throes of a tremendous social revolution. There was the defeated and humiliated Southern white man not knowing what to do with the new, unaccustomed system of labor, confronting the emancipated slave not knowing what to do with his newly acquired freedom. It was a fearful situation everywhere: distress, perplexity, convulsive efforts and collisions; society, utterly disorganized, staggering on the brink of a bloody war of races. The army, still present, kept something like order, but, under its protection, white adventurers, at the head of the ignorant negro voters, set up those carpet-bag governments from which some of the Southern States suffered almost as much spoliation as from the war itself. After long agony a ray of hope dawned. President Hayes withdrew the troops from the South. The Southern whites overcame the negro majorities, partly by violence, partly by stratagem—still a bad and deplorable state of things, indeed, but one under which the energies of society revived and its working forces got into fruitful activity again. The spirit of enterprise returned and a new prosperity followed. The relations between the white and the black races grew steadily more friendly and favorable to mutual coöperation. But the fear of a return of that negro domination from which the South had suffered so fearfully still hung like a dark, threatening cloud over society, as long as the colored people threw their vote compactly on the side of one political party. And that fear brought forth all sorts of sinister efforts to avert the danger.