Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/239

 abundant expression to her sense of injury and outrage. Nor is it strange that her feelings dominated to a great extent the intercourse between Southern and Northern men. A Northerner could hardly hope to be admitted to any Southern social circles on terms of welcome. The men might treat him with a certain businesslike consideration, but he was in danger of snubs of such exquisite frigidity from the ladies, that he would feel, at best, like an unwillingly tolerated, but really intolerable intruder. This state of feeling was much to be deplored, for it obstructed friendly approach between Northerners and Southerners, and thus in a general sense between the South and the North, at a time when such approach would have been most apt to prevent great mischief. In fact, it required the passing of many years to restore a satisfactory degree of cordiality in the social intercourse between the North and the South; and even now, more than forty years after the close of the Civil War, the visitor to the South, if he wishes to keep quite unruffled the temper of his lady friends,—a temper usually so animated, sympathetic, and captivating—will have circumspectly to steer clear of topics touching certain phases of the war period.

From time to time, traveling from State to State, I reported to President Johnson my observations and the conclusions I drew from them. I not only was most careful to tell him the exact truth as I saw it, but I elicited from our military officers and from agents of the Freedmen's Bureau stationed in the South, as well as from prominent Southern men statements of their views and experiences, which formed a weighty body of authoritative testimony coming from men of high character and partly of important public position, some of whom were Republicans, some Democrats, some old anti-slavery men, some old pro-slavery men. All these papers, too, I