Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/360

336 walk behind the plow or to attend to the milking of cows in the solitude of farm life, and the spreading among them of the desire to enjoy a pleasanter existence and to do easier and finer work in the cities, which we observe all around us in the North, with no little anxiety as to what it may at last lead to, is no doubt largely attributable to the natural effects of popular education. But if here, at the North, the question were asked whether for this reason popular education should be restricted to the end of increasing the fitness and taste for farm work among our people, there would hardly be an audible voice of assent.

That the evil of ignorance as an active element on the political field presents a more serious and complicated problem in the South than in the North cannot be denied, for the mass of ignorance precipitated into the body politic by the enfranchisement of the blacks is so much greater there than here. But most significant and of evil augury is the fact that with many of the Southern whites a well-educated colored voter is as objectionable as an ignorant one, or even more objectionable, simply on account of his color. It is, therefore, not mere dread of ignorance in the voting body that arouses the Southern whites against the colored voters. It is race-antagonism, and that race-antagonism presents a problem more complicated and perplexing than most others, because it is apt to be unreasoning. It creates violent impulses which refuse to be argued with. One of the worst effects the predominance of the slavery interest produced upon the public mind in the old days consisted in the despotic virulence with which in the South it suppressed the freedom of inquiry and discussion with regard to a matter which in the highest degree concerned the welfare of the Southern people. The expression of any opinion hostile to slavery was fiercely resented as an attack upon an institution which must not be touched, a sort of sacrilegious attempt