Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/350

326 see fit to subject the suffrage in their States to suitable qualifications equally applicable to whites and blacks; that the negro voters might be guided by wise leadership; and finally that, whatever might happen, this escape from the perplexing dilemma was after all the most in consonance with our principles of democratic government—a government the blessings of which cannot be had without the risk of its bringing forth concomitant troubles.

I am convinced that this statement fairly represents the line of reasoning prevalent among thinking men in the North who at that time favored negro suffrage. To judge from certain of their public utterances, it is now believed by many Southern men that negro suffrage was imposed upon the South from motives of hatred or vindictiveness. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There was indeed here and there some fierce language indulged in, the war passions not having completely subsided. It is also true that the reckless policy and the intemperate utterances of President Johnson had made the anti-slavery men in the country and the Republican majority in Congress suspect that their cause had been betrayed by the President, and that the most trenchant measures were necessary to baffle that treachery. And thus one of the most intricate problems of our history became involved in a passionate political fray, well apt to heat men's minds and to make many of them reckless of consequences. But I can confidently affirm—and I had at the time very large opportunities for personal observation—that the serious and influential men favoring negro suffrage were not controlled by any feeling of hatred or vindictiveness but by the sober consideration that the legitimate results of the war—among them, in the first line, the abolition of slavery and the establishment of free labor in the South—were in very serious danger of being rendered practically inoperative, if not entirely annulled, by the reactionary movement in