A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (25 page)

From the surrender of the rebel armies up to the Christmas holidays, and more especially for a few weeks preceding the latter, there was a nervousness exhibited throughout the south, in relation to their late slaves, that was little consonant to their former professions of trust in them. There were vague and terrible fears of a servile insurrection—a thing which the simple-minded negroes scarcely dreamed of. In consequence of this there were extensive seizures of arms and ammunition, which the negroes had foolishly collected, and strict precautions were taken to avoid any outbreak. Pistols, old muskets, and shotguns were taken away from them as such weapons would be wrested from the hands of lunatics. Since the holidays, however, there has been a great improvement in this matter; many of the whites appear to be ashamed of their former distrust, and the negroes are seldom molested now in carrying the fire-arms of which they make such a vain display. In one way or another they have procured great numbers of old army muskets and revolvers, particularly in Texas, and I have, in a few instances, been amused at the vigor and audacity with which they have employed them to protect themselves against the robbers and murderers that infest that State.

Another result of the above-mentioned settled belief in the negro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is discouraged from leaving his old master. I have known of planters who considered it an offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire their old hands, and in two instances that were reported the disputants came to blows over the breach of etiquette. It is only, however, in the most remote regions, where our troops have seldom or never penetrated, that the negroes have not perfect liberty to rove where they choose. Even when the attempt is made to restrain them by a system of passes from their employers, or from police patrols, it is of little avail; for the negroes, in their ignorance and darkness of understanding, are penetrated with a singularly strong conviction that they “are not free so long as they stay at the old place;” and all last summer and fall they pretty thoroughly demonstrated their freedom by changing their places of residence. Such a thorough chaos and commingling of population has seldom been seen since the great barbarian invasion of the Roman empire. In this general upheaval thousands of long-scattered families were joyously reunited. It is a strange fact, however, and one which I have abundantly established by the testimony of hundreds of the negroes themselves, that a large majority of them have finally returned voluntarily and settled down in the old cabins of their former quarters. The negro clings to old associations—it was only a temporary impulse of their new-found freedom to wander away from them; and at last they returned, generally wearied, hungry, and forlorn. In most cases, or at least in many cases, it was not so much from any affection toward their former masters as it was from a mere instinctive attachment to the homes of their youth—the familiar scenes in the midst of which they were born and reared. When I was in Selma, Alabama, last fall, a constant stream of them, of all ages and conditions, were pouring through that city on their way, as they always told me, to Mississippi or Tennessee. Many were transported free by our government, while many were on foot, trudging hopefully but painfully forward toward their old homes, from which they had been taken to escape our armies.

I believe that in some of the most interior districts, especially in Texas, the substance of slavery still remains, in the form of the bondage of custom, of fear, and of inferiority; but nowhere are there any negroes so ignorant of the great change that has taken place as to submit to the lash. In no place did I hear the slightest allusion to any punishment of this sort having been inflicted since the rebellion ended. In every case it was violent stabbing or shooting, resulting from a personal encounter. The negro was aware of his rights, and was defending them. His friends need never fear his re-enslavement; it never can, never will take place. His head is filled with the idea of freedom, and anything but the most insidious and blandishing encroachments upon his freedom he will perceive and resist. The planters everywhere complain of his “demoralization” in this respect.

As to the personal treatment received by the negro at the hands of the southern people there is wide-spread misapprehension. It is not his former master, as a general thing, that is his worst enemy, but quite the contrary. I have talked earnestly with hundreds of old slave-owners, and seen them move among their former “chattels,” and I am not mistaken. The feeling with which a very large majority of them regard the negro is one of genuine commiseration, although it is not a sentiment much elevated above that with which they would look upon a suffering animal for which they had formed an attachment. Last summer the negroes, exulting in their new-found freedom, as was to have been expected, were gay, thoughtless, and improvident; and, as a consequence, when the winter came hundreds of them felt the pinchings of want, and many perished. The old planters have often pointed out to me numerous instances of calamity that had come under their own observation in the case of their former slaves and others.

It was one of the most pernicious effects of slavery that it confined the attention of the owner entirely to the present bodily condition of his slaves, and ignored all calculations upon his future mental or moral growth; it gave him that mean opinion of the negroes' capacity that he still retains. The planter reasoned only from the actual facts, and never from possibilities. Inheriting his slaves, and finding them always brutish, stupid, and slow of understanding, he committed the logical inaccuracy of preventing them from ever becoming anything else, and proceeded to argue that they never could become so. To a certain extent it is true, as has been forcibly said, that “those who have seen most of the negro know least of him,” though the assertion should be reduced to this—that they know far less of him as a human being than we of the north, but much more respecting his mere animal characteristics. Notwithstanding all this, I insist that there was in most cases a real attachment between master and slave, and still is, especially between the family and house servants.

It is the former slave-owners who are the best friends the negro has in the south—those who, heretofore, have provided for his mere physical comfort, generally with sufficient means, though entirely neglecting his better nature, while it is the “poor whites” that are his enemies. It is from these he suffers most. In a state of slavery they hated him; and, now that he is free, there is no striking abatement of this sentiment, and the former master no longer feels called by the instincts of interest to extend that protection that he once did. On the streets, by the roadside, in his wretched hut, in the field of labor—everywhere, the inoffensive negro is exposed to their petty and contemptible persecutions; while, on the other hand, I have known instances where the respectable, substantial people of a community have united together to keep guard over a house in which the negroes were taking their amusement, and from which, a few nights before, they had been rudely driven by white vagabonds, who found pleasure in their fright and suffering. I reiterate, that the former owners, as a class, are the negroes' best friends in the south, although many of this class diligently strive to discourage the freedmen from any earnest efforts to promote their higher welfare. When one believes that a certain race of beings are incapable of advancement, he is very prone to withhold the means of that advancement. And it is in this form that a species of slavery will longest be perpetuated—it is in these strongholds that it will last die out. I am pretty sure that there is not a single negro in the whole south who is not receiving pay for his labor according to his own contract; but, as a general thing, the freedmen are encouraged to collect about the old mansion in their little quarters, labor for their former master for set terms, receiving, besides their pay, food, quarters, and medical attendance, and thus continuing on in their former state of dependence. The cruelties of slavery, and all of its outward forms, have entirely passed away; but, as might have been expected, glimmerings of its vassalage, its subserviency, and its helplessness, linger.

(September 8, 1866)

In early September, in advance of the midterm elections of 1866, Schurz delivered this fiery political speech at National Hall in Philadelphia. In it, he condemned the president's Reconstruction program as reactionary. Comparing Johnson unfavorably with his predecessor, Schurz alleged that the martyred Lincoln never would have allowed Southern Unionists or the freedpeople to suffer at the mercy of the unrepentant Rebels. Schurz supported a proposed new Constitutional amendment that would provide due process and would disfranchise persons who denied citizens their rights. Anticipating the Radical Republicans' own Reconstruction program, Schurz proclaimed that the battle lines with Johnson were drawn.

I declare here before the American people, and I call to witness every honest man on the face of the globe, if, after having taken the money of the National creditor, upon the distinct promise that his interest should be fairly secured; if, after having called upon the Southern loyalist for coöperation, upon the distinct promise that his rights should be protected; if, after having summoned the negro to the battlefield, upon the distinct and solemn promise that his race should be forever and truly free; if, after having done all this, the Government of this Republic restores the rebel States to the full enjoyment of their rights and the full exercise of their power in the Union, without previously exacting such irreversible stipulations and guarantees as will fully, and beyond peradventure, secure the National creditor, the Southern Union man and the emancipated negro against those encroachments upon their rights which the reaction now going on is bringing with it, it will be the most unnatural, the most treacherous, the most dastardly act ever committed by any nation in the history of the world. It will be such an act as will render every man who participates in it unfit forever to sit in the company of gentlemen.

You remember the scorn and contempt with which the rebels spoke about the “mean-spirited Yankee.” Do this, betray those who stood by you in the hour of need, and at that moment you will deserve it all. Do this, and your bitterest enemy in the South will have a right to ask the negro, “Did we not tell you the Yankees would cheat you?” And the negro will have to reply, “You did; and you were right.” Not because they hated you, but because they despised you, the people of the South ventured upon the rebellion. Do this, betray your friends into the hands of their enemies, and they will despise you more than ever before, and you will have to say to yourselves that you deserve it.

And yet a policy like this I have heard designated as the “Lincoln and Johnson policy.” In the name of common decency, in the name of the respect we owe to the memory of our martyred President, I solemnly protest against this insidious coupling of names. The Lincoln policy! I knew Abraham Lincoln well; and at times when many earnest and true men were dissatisfied with his ways, and when I myself could not resist an impulse of impatience, yet I never lost my faith in him, because I knew him well. The workings of his mind were slow; but the pure and noble sympathies of his heart, true as the magnet needle, always guided them to the polar star of universal justice. He was not one of those bold reformers who will go far ahead of the particular requirements of the hour; he laboriously endeavored to comprehend what the situation demanded, and when he once clearly understood it, at once he planted his foot, and no living man ever saw Abraham Lincoln make a step backward. His march was ahead, and each dawning day found him a warmer advocate of the progressive ideas of our great age.

I have heard it said, and it is one of the staple arguments of Mr. Johnson's friends, that Abraham Lincoln would never have imposed upon the rebel States a condition precedent to restoration because it was not in the Baltimore platform. If Mr. Lincoln had been assassinated in the year 1862, they might, with equal justice, have said, because emancipation was not in the Chicago platform of 1860, he would never have been in favor of emancipation. I undertake to say he would have been as firm an advocate of impartial suffrage to-day as he was of emancipation, had he lived to see how necessary the one is to secure and complete the other. True, he never ranted about the hanging and impoverishing of traitors, but in his soul slept the sublime ideal of merciful justice and just mercy. He would not have thought of taking bloody revenge on the Union's enemies, but he would never have ceased to think of being just to the Union's friends. Abraham Lincoln and this “policy”! He would rather have suffered himself to be burnt at the stake than to break or endanger the pledge he had given to the Southern Union man when he called upon him for assistance, and to the negro soldier, when he summoned him to the field of battle; and if he could rise from the dead and walk among us to-day, we would see him imploring mercy upon the accursed souls of his assassins. But even his large heart, with its inexhaustible mine of human kindness, would have no prayer for those who strive to undo, or culpably suffer to be undone, the great work which was the crowning glory of his life.

Let Andrew Johnson's friends look for arguments wherever they choose, but let the grave of the great martyr of liberty be safe against their defiling touch. In the name of the National heart I protest against the infamous trick of associating Abraham Lincoln with a policy which drove into exile the truest men of the South, and culminated in the butchery of New Orleans. If Andrew Johnson has chosen his pillory, let him stand there alone, enveloped in the incense of bought flattery, adored by every villain in the land, and loaded down with the maledictions of the down-trodden and degraded.

Americans, the lines are drawn, and the issues of the contests are clearly made up.

You want the Union fully restored. We offer it to you—a Union based upon universal liberty, impartial justice and equal rights, upon sacred pledges faithfully fulfilled, upon the faith of the Nation nobly vindicated; a Union without a slave and without a tyrant; a Union of truly democratic States; a Union capable of ripening to full maturity all that is great and hopeful in the mind and heart of the American people; a Union on every square foot of which free thought may shine out in free utterance; a Union between the most promising elements of progress, between the most loyal impulses in every section of this vast Republic; in one word, a Union between the true men of the North and the true men of the South.

The reactionists, with their champion, Andrew Johnson, also offer you a Union—a Union based upon deception unscrupulously practiced, upon great promises treacherously violated, upon the National faith scandalously broken; a Union whose entrails are once more to be lacerated by the irrepressible struggle between slavery and liberty; a Union in a part of which the rules of speech will be prescribed by the terrorism of the mob, and free thought silenced by the policeman's club and the knife of the assassin; a Union tainted with the blood of its truest friends and covered with the curses of its betrayed children; a Union between the fighting traitors of the South and the scheming traitors of the North; a Union between the New York rioters of 1863 and the Memphis and New Orleans rioters of 1866.

You want magnanimity to a beaten foe. We offer it to you. We demand no blood, no persecution, no revenge. We only insist that when the Republic distributes the charitable gift of pardon and grace, the safety and rights of her faithful children are entitled to the first consideration. We are ready to grasp the hand of the South. We only want first to ascertain whether the blood of our slaughtered friends is already dried on it. Peace and good-will to all men is the fondest wish of our heart and we are anxious to give and secure it even to the bitterest of our enemies as soon as they show an honest willingness to grant it to all of our friends.

The reactionists, with their champion, Andrew Johnson, speak, too, of magnanimity. Magnanimity! What magnanimity is this which consists in forgiveness to the Union's enemies and forgetfulness to the Union's friends? which puts the dagger into the hands of the former with which to strike at the lives of the latter? Magnanimity, indeed! It is mercy in the prostituting embrace of treason; it is persecution and murder in the garb of grace.

Are the American people sunk so deeply—can they be so completely lost to all sense of decency and honor—that such an insult to their common sense, and to the generous impulses of their hearts, should be offered to them with impunity? Or is it possible that those who but yesterday would have defied the world in arms, should to-day, with craven pusillanimity, recoil before the difficulties which the revived hopes of defeated traitors oppose to their onward march? I appeal to your understandings. Let the clear, practical eye of the American be turned upon the task immediately before us, and see how simple it is. You have but to speak and the dangers which surround you will vanish. Let the National will rise up from the ballot-boxes of November with a strength which laughs at resistance, and with a clearness of utterance which admits of no doubt, and the reaction which now surges against you like a sea of angry waves will play around your feet like the harmless rivulet set running by an April shower. Even Andrew Johnson's damaged intellect will quickly perceive that, although he may succeed in buying up a few forlorn wretches, it is a hopeless enterprise to debauch the great heart of the American people. He will learn in season that it would indeed be highly imprudent for him to think of dictatorship, and that if he ventured too far in his treacherous course, the American people are not incapable of remembering what he has so strenuously impressed upon their minds, that “treason must be made odious,” and that “traitors must be punished.” The late rebels will soon understand that those who defeated them in the field still live; and that it will be a wise thing for the South to lose no time in accommodating themselves to a necessity from which there is no escape. Nay, even to our friend, Henry Ward Beecher, it may finally become clear that by boldly and unflinchingly insisting upon what is right, the Union can just as quickly, and far more firmly, be restored than by accepting with fidgety impatience that which is wrong. But above all, our loyal friends in the South, white and black, whose cry for help is to-day thrilling the heart of every just man in the land, will raise their heads with proud confidence, feeling that they do not stand alone among their enemies, but that as they, in the gloomiest hours of danger, were true to the Republic, the Republic, so help her, God, will be true to them.

Yes, let the National will once more make itself understood to friend and foe, and the dangers which are now hanging over us like a black cloud will quickly clear away. Before its thunder tones the armed legions of the rebellion could not stand; before it the iniquitous designs of the reaction will soon vanish in utter hopelessness. Andrew Johnson's wretched brigade will be dispersed as by a whirlwind; the arm of the daring demagogue, which is now so defiantly lifted against the popular conscience, will fall palsied by his side, and the truly loyal men of America will quickly, justly and firmly restore the shaken fabric of the Union.

We have passed through gloomy days of late; days of grievous disappointment, of deep humiliation, of sorrowful anxiety. But when the other night I stood upon the balcony of the Union League House and saw the countless multitude surging below, a multitude greater in number than the hosts which marched with Sherman to the sea, or the Army of the Potomac when it swept over the ramparts of Richmond, and that multitude, as once our battalions were summoned to the battlefield by the paternal voice of Abraham Lincoln, now following the solemn call of the same voice issuing from the grave; and when I saw from that ocean of human faces radiating forth the electric light of intelligence and love of liberty; and when I thought that the volcanic bursts of enthusiasm there were but one throb of the patriotic emotions which are to-day again swelling the great heart of the loyal North, then my soul felt itself lifted out of the gloom of dark apprehensions and I ceased to fear for the future of the Republic. Then it became certain again to my mind, that the great people of the New World, who fought a four years' battle of conscience, have not forgotten their exalted mission on earth, and that the very gates of hell cannot shake their mighty determination to wield, with a firm hand, the National power, until justice is done to all, and until, with safety to all, the Republic can be set afloat upon the broadest channel of self-government.

We have already heard the triumphant morning gun of Vermont, booming with increased volume. Far-off San Francisco has merrily responded; old Maine in the North stands ready to send us a cheering echo, and all over the land our hosts are mustering with the inspiring confidence that to march on is to conquer.

Our time has come. Forward into line, Republicans! This is to be the final battle of the war. Let it be the greatest victory of right and justice.