Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/340

316 of equitable contract arrangements, and, generally, in organizing the new free labor system for the benefit of both. It would have been an institution of the greatest value under competent leadership, had not its organization been to some extent invaded by mentally and morally unfit persons. That this imperfect organization and the corresponding failures in its conduct prevented it in so large a measure from accomplishing its object, cannot be too much deplored. For nothing was more needed at that time than an authority standing between the late master and the late slave, commanding and possessing the confidence and respect of both, to aid the emancipated black man in making the best possible use of his unaccustomed freedom, and to aid the white man, to whom free negro labor was a well-nigh inconceivable idea, in meeting the difficulties which partly existed in reality and were partly conjured up by the white man's prejudice and inflamed imagination.

That the Freedmen's Bureau actually did much valuable service in this direction cannot be denied. It did protect many freedmen against violence and prevailed on many others to abstain from breaking their contracts with white men, and to stay at work. It helped in developing the work of education among the blacks which had been started by benevolent Northern people with admirable energy and self-sacrifice during the civil war, wherever the National army controlled any district of country largely peopled by blacks. But the shortcomings of the general management of the Freedmen's Bureau, and the ill-suited qualifications of some of its agents and representatives, greatly impaired that moral authority which was especially required for so comprehensive and delicate a task.

The second great difficulty, and of worse effect even than the partial failure of the Freedmen's Bureau, was the