Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/335

Rh good to speak with you on things on which we substantially agree, while it makes me feel more keenly the sorrowful regret that there are other things of fundamental importance on which we differ. But no more of this now. I would only repeat that I thank you heartily for your kind letter; and I say this as one whose course is nearly run, who is retired from the activities of politics, except that he may now and then express in print his opinion on this or that matter of public interest, and to whom it is the greatest pleasure to find something to praise, instead of something to blame.

Wishing you and your family a happy new year, I am, 



In the recent public discussions of the race problem in the United States, occasional reference has been made to a report submitted by me to President Johnson in 1865. At the request of the President I had visited the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for the purpose of studying their condition and of laying the results of my observations before him. It may be profitable at the present moment to recall that condition, inasmuch as thus some light may be shed upon the origin and purpose of the so-called reconstruction measures, to which the gravest of the difficulties prevailing in the Southern country are now attributed.

When I set out on that tour of investigation, only three months had elapsed since the close of the civil war. The Confederate soldiers had but recently returned to their homes. They found those homes, wherever touched by military operations, more or less devastated, and, in almost every instance, in a greatly neglected if not dilapidated