Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/142

118 At last this cloud is lifted too. The negro vote has actually begun to divide. If the process now going on continues, the fear of negro domination, and with it the greatest obstacle to a harmonious coöperation of the two races on the political field, as well as that of productive labor, will soon be a thing of the past. No true friend of the colored race can wish a happier solution of this difficulty, for the political rights of the negro will stand under the active protection of all political parties. No true friend of the Southern people will fail to hail it as a most auspicious event, for it will take a burden of dread from the minds of the Southern whites; it will powerfully promote peace and good will between the different elements of the Southern population; it will give the Southern people increased confidence in their future and inspire them with fresh courage and energy in the development of their prosperity. No good citizen who has the common interests of the whole country, North and South, at heart will fail joyfully to hail it as the removal of a source of irritation between the two sections, as a new bond of cordial feeling, as a new guarantee of material progress in the South, and of those advantages which come to every part of the country by the growing prosperity of every other part.

Into this hopeful situation the force bill is to be thrust as a new brand of discord. No matter whether it be advocated by mere partisan lust of power or misguided zeal in behalf of a principle—the effect of the measure, if enacted, will be the same; an insidious stretch of governmental power, the incitement among the Southern negroes of unwarranted political ambitions and expectations by the reappearance of the Federal Government as a meddler with elections; the interruption of the salutary division of the negro vote between different parties; the revival among the Southern whites of the old dread of negro