Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/249

 right. He showed me reports from his district commanders which substantially anticipated his order. But the General was anxious to know whether the President had authorized or approved Governor Sharkey's action. This he asked me to ascertain, and I telegraphed to President Johnson the following dispatch: “General Slocum has issued an order prohibiting the organization of the militia in this State. The organization of the militia would have been a false step. All I can see and learn in the State convinces me that the course followed by General Slocum is the only one by which public order and security can be maintained. To-day I shall forward by mail General Slocum's order with a full statement of the case.”

Indeed, the policy of organizing the militia in such a State as Mississippi, that is, of re-organizing and re-arming a part of the Confederate army, for the purpose, among other things, of protecting the Union men of the South and the emancipated slaves in their rights, at a time when the Union men were still heartily hated and the reversal of emancipation ardently desired by the very class of men thus to be armed and organized, was so glaringly absurd, that I could not suppose the President possibly to be in favor of it, whatever Governor Sharkey might have told him. Passing through Jackson, the capital of the State, I had long conversations with him in which he had impressed me as a pleasant old gentleman who sincerely cherished Union sentiments and wished all things to come out right, but who was intellectually too feeble to cope with the astute persons who wanted to preserve as much as possible of the system of slave labor and to this end the earliest possible removal of the Federal forces from the South. And persons of that class had entire possession of the amiable Governor. He admitted to me that all the “outrages” he complained of were really committed against negroes and Union men, and that if the