Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/358

334 overwhelming majority of the Southern whites that the “peculiar institution” of slavery was an economic, moral, social and political blessing, while, in fact, slavery as the predominant interest, making everything else subordinate to itself, weighed down, like an incubus, industry, commercial enterprise, popular education—everything that constitutes progressive civilization. I remember the time when an apparently irresistible sentiment drove the Southern whites into a reckless war for the purpose of founding an independent empire on the corner-stone of slavery, while sober judgment would have told them that their resources were unequal to the task, and that, even if they had proved themselves equal, an empire so founded could not possibly have stood against the civilization of the age. I have heard them, after the war, insist, with an almost unanimous voice, that they knew the negro better than anybody else did and that “the negro would not work without physical compulsion.” Subsequent developments have proved that in this respect their judgment was glaringly at fault; and here is that proof: In 1860 the cotton crop, raised by slave labor under the system of “physical compulsion,” was 4,861,000 bales. In 1898 the cotton crop was 11,216,000 bales, and in 1899, 11,256,000 bales. A portion of these crops was, no doubt, cultivated by whites. But it will hardly be denied that by far the larger part was raised by negro labor, while a considerable portion of the colored people did not work on cotton plantations; and the crops in 1898 and 1899 were raised while the negro, as a rule, did not labor under physical compulsion. It is thus conclusively demonstrated by undisputed fact that the Southern whites who after the close of the war almost unanimously insisted that the “negro would not work without physical compulsion” were signally wrong as to what means must be used “to make the negro work.” The list of such mistakes