Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/337

Rh make the negro work without physical compulsion.” In the language of my report:

I heard this hundreds of times, heard it wherever I went, heard it in nearly the same words from so many different persons that at last I came to the conclusion that this was the prevailing sentiment among the Southern people. There were exceptions to this rule, but far from enough to affect the rule. In the accompanying documents you will find an abundance of proof in support of this statement. There is hardly a paper relative to the negro question annexed to this report which does not, in some direct or indirect way, corroborate it. Unfortunately, the disorders necessarily growing out of the transition state continually furnished food for argument. I found but few people who were willing to make due allowance for the adverse influence of exceptional circumstances. By a large majority of those I came in contact with, and they mostly belonged to the more intelligent class, every irregularity that occurred was directly charged against the system of free labor. If negroes walked away from the plantations, it was conclusive proof of the incorrigible instability of the negro and the impracticability of free labor. If some individual negro violated the terms of his contract, it proved unanswerably that no negro had or ever would have a just conception of the binding force of a contract, and that this system of free negro labor was bound to be a failure. If some negroes shirked or did not perform their task with sufficient alacrity, it was produced as irrefutable evidence to show that physical compulsion was absolutely indispensable to make the negro work. If negro idlers or refugees crawling about the towns applied to the authorities for subsistence, it was quoted as incontestably establishing the point that the negro was too improvident to take care of himself and must necessarily be consigned to the care of a master. I heard a Georgia planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused to submit to a whipping. I frequently went into an argument with those putting forth such general assertions, quoting instances in which negro