Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/95

Rh may be differences of opinion, and that this is a delegation of power to the President not warranted by the Constitution. And I must confess that I myself think so. But even if it were Constitutional, it is certain that its wisdom must be doubted; and that Congress, while it has repeatedly delegated to the President powers contingent upon the mere ascertainment of facts, has never in the recognition of the one-man power gone as far as now. And why did it do so now? In order, by this mock reciprocity, to obviate truer reciprocity, which would have been dangerous to high protection.

I have mentioned the election bill together with the tariff, and you may ask me whether the two serve any interest in common. A word about that.

Whatever specious pretenses may have been put forth, the election bill, as everybody knows, is designed mainly to affect the elections in the Southern States, in several districts of which, we are told, Republican members of Congress would be elected if the negroes were permitted to vote. A free ballot and a fair count, it is said, we must secure to them.

Look a moment at the South. By the sudden emancipation and enfranchisement of 4,000,000 slaves a social revolution was thrust upon the South greater and more rapid perhaps than any that history tells us of. A part of it I have witnessed myself. Immediately after the close of the civil war in 1865, I was sent by President Johnson into the Southern States to inquire into their condition. The spectacle I beheld was frightful. Hordes of negroes wandering idly about to enjoy their own freedom. Bands of impoverished whites, not a few almost wild with the excitement of distress, seeking to force the negroes back to work. Blood flowed, atrocious things were done. The South seemed to be on the brink of a race war. How would this appalling confusion end?