Carl Schurz

“ It is nonsense to talk so much about plans for getting the negroes to work. They do now and always have done, all the physical labor of the south, and if treated as they should be by their government, (which is so anxious to be magnanimous to the white people of this country, who never did work and never will,) they will continue to do so. Who are the workmen in these fields? Who are hauling the cotton to market, driving hacks and drays in the cities, repairing streets and railroads, cutting timber, and in every place raising the hum of industry? The freedmen, not the rebel soldiery. ”

“ I believe that affairs in South Carolina are yet in a very crude state; that outrages are being practiced upon the negro which the military arm should prevent. Doubtless many stories are fabricated or exaggerated, but a calm and candid citizen of Charleston has said: “Is it wonderful that this should be so; that men whose slaves have come at their call, but now demur, hesitate, and perhaps refuse labor or demand certain wages therefor—that such men, smarting under their losses and defeats, should vent their spite upon a race slipping from their power and asserting their newly acquired rights? ”

“ Murder with his ghastly train stalks abroad at noonday and revels in undisputed carnage, while the bewildered and terrified freedmen know not what to do. To leave is death; to remain is to suffer the increased burden imposed on them by the cruel taskmaster, whose only interest is their labor wrung from them by every device an inhuman ingenuity can devise. Hence the lash and murder are resorted to to intimidate those whom fear of an awful death alone causes to remain, while patrols, negro dogs, and spies (disguised as Yankees) keep constant guard over these unfortunate people. ”

“ I may state here that there is such a general expression of contempt for negro religion, and such a desire to suppress it, if possible, that it seems as if the whites thought it a piece of terrible impertinence for the blacks to worship the same God that we do. The white people also fear, or affect to fear, that opposition to their plans, and even insurrection, will be hatched at the meetings of colored people. The Nemesis of slavery still holds her whip over them. ”

“ That in times like ours, and in a country like this, a reaction in favor of compulsory labor cannot be ultimately successful, is as certain as it was that slavery could not last forever. But a movement in that direction can prevent much good that might be accomplished, and produce much evil that might be avoided. Not only will such a movement seriously interfere with all efforts to organize an efficient system of free labor, and thus very materially retard the return of prosperity in the south, but it may bring on a crisis as dangerous and destructive as the war of the rebellion itself. ”

“ I am, therefore, convinced that the education of the white and black must go hand in hand together until the system of free labor is so absolutely demonstrated that the interest of the employer will be found in the intelligence, the well-being, and the comfort of the employed. ”

“ The first experience of the insurgents is a complete submission, followed by a promise to abstain from all further acts of rebellion—in fact, the nucleus of their loyalty is necessity, while perhaps some with still a sentiment of loyalty in their hearts for the old flag turn back, like the prodigal, with tearful eyes, wasted means, and exhausted energies.
At the present time there can be but few loyal men in the State of South Carolina who, through evil and good report, have withstood the wiles of secession. ”

“ It seems to me that we are forgetting the helpless and poor in our desire to assist our subjugated enemies, and that we are more desirous of showing ourselves to be a great and magnanimous nation than of protecting the people who have assisted us by arms, and who turned the scale of battle in our favor. We certainly commit a wrong, if, while restoring these communities to all their former privileges as States, we sacrifice one jot or tittle of the rights and liberties of the freedmen. ”

“ The planters, who represented the wealth of the southern country, are partly laboring under the severest embarrassments, partly reduced to absolute poverty. Many who are stripped of all available means, and have nothing but their land, cross their arms in gloomy despondency, incapable of rising to a manly resolution. Others, who still possess means, are at a loss how to use them, as their old way of doing things is, by the abolition of slavery, rendered impracticable, at least where the military arm of the government has enforced emancipation. ”

“ If, as long as the change from slavery to free labor is known to the southern people only by its destructive results, these people must be expected to throw obstacles in its way, would it not seem necessary that the movement of social “reconstruction” be kept in the right channel by the hand of the power which originated the change, until that change can have disclosed some of its beneficial effects? ”

“ All classes of society are intensely dissatisfied with things as they are. General explosions may be prevented, but they are always imminent. This state of uncertainty impedes all successful working of the social forces; people, instead of devoting themselves with confidence and steadiness to solid pursuits, are apt to live from hand to mouth, or to indulge in fitful experiments; capital ventures out but with great timity; the lawless elements of the community take advantage of the general confusion and dissatisfaction, and society drifts into anarchy. ”

“ Although somewhat ignorant of the proceeding of the federal Congress, if elected I shall try to promote the especial interests of this State. I shall urge that the United States government owe it as a duty to the State of Mississippi to repair her levees; her people are so impoverished by the war that they cannot stand the taxation necessary to rebuild them. I believe it to be the duty of the general government to appropriate money to assist the people to improve their railroads, rivers, and assist in like new enterprises. ”

“ There are certainly many planters who, before the rebellion, treated their slaves with kindness, and who now continue to treat them as free laborers in the same manner. There are now undoubtedly many plantations in the south on which the relations between employers and employés are based upon mutual good will. There are certainly many people there who entertain the best wishes for the welfare of the negro race, and who not only never participated in any acts of violence, but who heartily disapprove them. ”

“ Do you think that the white population of South Carolina, if restored to the possession of political power in this State, would carry out the spirit of the emancipation proclamation, and go to work in a bona fide manner to organize free labor? ”

“ I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the south accept the present situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections—slavery and State rights, or the right of a State to secede from the Union—they regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal—arms—that man can resort to. ”

“ At times it has been necessary to adopt stringent measures to stem the tide of freedmen that seemed to be setting in toward Shreveport, and many of them have such vague ideas of the moral obligations of a contract that it has been necessary to strengthen them by imprisonment and hard labor; but the great and insuperable difficulty which meets us at every step is, that the planters and the freedmen have no confidence in and respect for each other. The planters inform us that they are the best friends of the negro, but the freedmen fail to see the matter in that light. ”

“ Old associations, customs and prejudices, the pressure of public opinion, and the undying hostility to federal innovation, all conspire gainst impartiality to color. Such is the state of affairs in this city.
In the counties of this district above named there is no right of the negro which the white man respects; all is anarchy and confusion; a reign of terror exists, and the life of the freedmen is at the mercy of any villain whose hatred or caprice incites to murder. ”

“ So far, the spirit of persecution has shown itself so strong as to make the protection of the freedman by the military arm of the government in many localities necessary—in almost all, desirable. It must not be forgotten that in a community a majority of whose members is peaceably disposed, but not willing or not able to enforce peace and order, a comparatively small number of bold and lawless men can determine the character of the whole. ”

“ Out of a negro population of over 75,000, only 649 receive rations from the government as destitutes.
I feel no hesitation in saying that it is imperatively necessary to give the system of free labor a fair trial, and to secure to the freedmen all the benefits contemplated by the emancipation proclamation; that officers or agents should be retained whose duty it is to look after the interests of this large class of people, and see that they are gradually accustomed to manage their own business and protect their own interests. ”

“ I have thought, and have said, and do now repeat, that my honest conviction is, we must accept the situation as it is until we can get control once more of our own State affairs. We cannot do otherwise and get our place again in the Union, and occupy a position, exert an influence, that will protect us against further and greater evils which threaten us. I must, as any other man who votes or holds an office, submit, for the time, to evils I cannot remedy. ”

“ Here I will insert some remarks on the general treatment of the blacks as a class, from the whites as a class. It is not on the plantations and at the hands of the planters themselves that the negroes have to suffer the greatest hardships. Not only the former slaveholders, but the non-slaveholding whites, who, even previous to the war, seemed to be more ardent in their pro-slavery feelings than the planters themselves, are possessed by a singularly bitter and vindictive feeling against the colored race since the negro has ceased to be property. ”

“ Which is the best, a regular military government, or the quiet, humane exercise of just so much authority as the case demands, by the master, who has every motive, human and divine, to exercise humanity and protect his slave from injustice and injury? ”

“ The general government of the republic has, by proclaiming the emancipation of the slaves, commenced a great social revolution in the south, but has, as yet, not completed it. Only the negative part of it is accomplished. The slaves are emancipated in point of form, but free labor has not yet been put in the place of slavery in point of fact. ”

“ As a people the South Carolinians are brave and generous in certain directions. In their cities there is great culture, and many of the citizens are persons of refinement, education and taste. The educated classes are well versed in the history of our country, and many have an intimate knowledge of the varied story of political parties. But from the lowest to the highest classes of the white population there is an instinctive dread of the negro and an utter abhorrence of any doctrine which argues an ultimate improvement of his condition beyond that of the merest chattel laborer. ”

“ It is, therefore, not even necessary that the reaction against that result of the war, which consists in emancipation, should manifest itself by very obnoxious legislative enactments, just as in some of the slave States slavery did not exist by virtue of the State constitution. It may be practically accomplished, and is, in fact, practically accomplished whenever the freed man is not protected by the federal authorities, without displaying its character and aims upon the statute book. ”

“ Nobody is absolutely free, white or black. I have been a slave all my life; you have been the same. We were subject to discipline from childhood, and the negro as well, and must continue to be subject to wholesome restraints all of us.
It is well to consider that the measures of the government have rendered labor scarce. It would be safe to say there is not half a supply; that every sort of inducement will be held out to get labor away from present situations; that the inclination of all who are unincumbered is, to get to the city and its neighborhood. ”

“ I do not mean to say that the southern people intend to retrace the steps they have made as soon as they have resumed control of their State affairs. Although they regret the abolition of slavery, they certainly do not intend to re-establish it in its old form. Although they are at heart opposed to the admission of negro testimony in the courts of justice, they probably will not re-enact the laws excluding it. ”

“ As to the future peace and harmony of the Union, it is of the highest importance that the people lately in rebellion be not permitted to build up another "peculiar institution" whose spirit is in conflict with the fundamental principles of our political system; for as long as they cherish interests peculiar to them in preference to those they have in common with the rest of the American people, their loyalty to the Union will always be uncertain. ”

“ In answer to your question with regard to free labor at the South, and particularly the way in which the contract system is viewed by persons who were formerly slaveholders, I would state that these persons accept the present condition of affairs as an alternative forced upon them, believing still that the emancipation of their slaves was a great blunder, and that slavery is the only system by which the colored laborer can be made profitable to his employer. ”

“ I therefore cannot feel that I am an alien in your midst, and, with something of confidence as to the result, appeal to you for your suffrages for the office of district attorney. I am as fully identified with the interests of Mississippi as it is possible for any one to be, and in my humble way, will strive as earnestly as any one to restore her lost franchises and lost prosperity. In former years I held in Kentucky a position similar to the one I now seek at your hands, and I hope that I violate no rule of propriety in saying that I deem myself equal to its duties and responsibilities. ”