Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/346

322 and print. Some declarations of that kind, made by persons of great prominence, have passed into the newspapers and are undoubtedly known to you. I append to this report a specimen, not as something particularly remarkable, but in order to present the current sentiment as expressed in the language of a candidate for a seat in the State convention of Mississippi. It is a card addressed to the voters of Wilkinson County, Mississippi, by General W. L. Brandon. The General complains of having been called an “unconditional emancipationist, an abolitionist.” He indignantly repels the charge and avows himself a good pro-slavery man. “But, fellow-citizens,” says he, “what I may in common with you have to submit to, is a very different thing. Slavery has been taken from us; the power that has already practically abolished it threatens totally and forever to abolish it. But does it follow that I am in favor of this thing? By no means. My honest conviction is, we must accept the situation as it is, until we can get control once more of our own State affairs. We cannot do otherwise to get our place again in the Union, and occupy a position, exert an influence, that will protect us against greater evils which threaten us. I must, as any other man who votes or holds an office, submit for the time to evils I cannot remedy.” General Brandon has only put in print what, as my observations lead me to believe, a majority of the people say even in more emphatic language; and the deliberations of several legislatures in that part of the country show what it means.

The same expectation served also to embarrass and impede the efforts made for the education of the freedmen. Aside from several honorable exceptions, I found the popular prejudice against negro education almost as bitter as it had been when slavery still existed. Hundreds of times I heard the old assertion repeated that “learning will spoil the negro for work,” and that “negro education would be the ruin of the South,” and in innumerable instances I discovered symptoms of the amazing notion that “the elevation of the blacks would be the degradation