Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/205

 These comparatively few consistent loyalists did not, as a rule, belong to the influential class. And among these few there were still fewer convinced anti-slavery men. It was therefore certain that a large majority of the voting body in the Southern States so to be reconstructed would consist of men who had taken part in the rebellion and then qualified themselves as voters by taking the oath of allegiance, and that this large majority would stand under the immediate influence of the class of men who had instigated the attempt to break up the Union for the purpose of founding “an empire on the corner-stone of slavery.” Nor was it unreasonable to expect that this class of men, if directly or indirectly entrusted with power, would indeed accept the abolition of slavery in point of form, but would spare no effort to preserve as much as possible of its substance.

Availing myself again of the privilege President Johnson had granted to me, I wrote to him about the anxieties among many of his friends caused by the position he had taken in his North Carolina proclamation, and in reply I received from him a telegraphic message asking me to call upon him at the White House at my earliest convenience. I obeyed his summons without delay.

On the way to Washington something strange happened to me which may be of interest to the speculative psychologist. I went from Bethlehem to Philadelphia in the afternoon with the intention of taking there the midnight train to Washington. At Philadelphia I took supper at the house of my intimate friend, Dr. Tiedemann, the son of the eminent professor of medicine at the University of Heidelberg, and brother of the Colonel Tiedemann, one of whose aides-de-camp I had been during the siege of the Fortress of Rastatt in 1849. Mrs. Tiedemann was a sister of Friedrich Hecker, the famous