Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/349

Rh garrisons, to be scattered all over the Southern country, and therefore a large number of soldiers. Moreover, the maintenance of military government in the South for an indefinite time would have been extremely undesirable, even if the necessary number of soldiers could have been ever so easily procured—for the reason that military rule as such is on general principles in the highest degree uncongenial to the spirit of our free institutions; and for the additional reason that the exercise of extraordinary powers by military garrisons in a conquered country is very apt to bring forth grave abuses, and that garrison life of just that kind, under just such circumstances, is eminently calculated to exercise a very demoralizing influence upon soldiers, especially upon volunteer soldiers, after a victorious campaign. It seemed therefore highly expedient that the necessity of indefinitely continuing military rule in the South be obviated in some way.

On the other hand, to enable the freedmen to protect themselves by the exercise of a certain measure of political power, was a problem hardly less perplexing. This could be done only by putting into their hands the ballot as a defensive weapon. That the great mass of the negroes would not use the ballot intelligently and with conscientious care was indeed apprehended by every thoughtful person. That it would have been vastly preferable to introduce colored suffrage gradually, and perhaps dependent upon certain qualifications, if that had been practicable by Federal action, was also admitted by many, if not most, of those who were in favor of making the negro a voter. But while it was foreseen that the exercise of suffrage by the bulk of the negroes in the South might bring forth unwelcome results, it was thought that those results might in the long run prove not as deplorable as would be those to be expected from an indefinite continuation of military rule; that the Southern people might