Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/246

 lingering trust that after all slavery might be preserved. When the elections for the constitutional conventions in the different States approached, candidates for seats, in most cases claiming the confidence of the people on the ground of their having been faithful Confederate soldiers during the war, declared frankly that they were at heart opposed to the freedom of the negro, but accepted it, and advised others to accept it, for the simple reason that this was the only way to obtain at once more full control of their own affairs, when the people, meaning the whites of those States, would be able to dispose of the matter as they pleased. Support of the President in his reconstruction policy was, therefore, warmly advocated.

From various quarters I received reports that planters were making extraordinary efforts to hold their former slaves together on their plantations, so that when the hoped-for restoration of slavery came, they might have less difficulty in identifying and reclaiming the slaves belonging to them. The cases of murder or mutilation of straggling freedmen increased in number. Various parish or county governments, organized under the authority of the provisional governors, anticipating the restoration of slavery or so much of it as might be found practicable, adopted ordinances or regulations putting the negroes under the strictest police control, stripping them almost completely of the right of free movement enjoyed by everyone else, and of the right to dispose of their persons and property, and re-establishing to the end of enforcing such regulations, which in many respects were identical with the old slave laws, the old county patrol and other devices designed to keep the negro in absolute subjection. The difference between the conditions contemplated by these regulations and the condition of slavery as it had been was very small. That under these circumstances efforts made by Northerners to establish schools for the