General Schurz's investigation had been made at the special request of the President. He had spent three months in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The President, when appointing him, had said that his own policy of Reconstruction was merely experimental and subject to change if it did not lead to satisfactory results. Schurz says in his "Reminiscences?"[81] that when he returned to Washington from his journey he had much difficulty in procuring an interview with the President; that the latter received him coldly and did not ask him for the results of his investigation; and that when he (Schurz) said that he intended to write a report, the President said that he need not take that trouble on his account. Schurz was convinced that the President wished to suppress his testimony and he resolved that he should not do so. He accordingly wrote the report and sent it in, with the accompanying documents, and let his friends in the Senate know that he had done so. On the 12th of December the Senate, on Sumner's motion, called for the report. The President did not respond immediately. In the mean time he had had a conversation with General Grant whose views were for the most part in accord with his own, and he asked the latter to communicate the information he had gained during his Southern tour in order to make it a part of his reply to the Senate Resolution. The reply occupies only one page and a half of McPherson's "Reconstruction." Schurz's consists of forty-four printed pages of text and fifty-eight pages of appendix; Schurz considered this the best paper he had ever written on a public matter, and there can be no doubt that it had great influence in Congress and on the Republican party. Yet the brief report of Grant was the sounder of the two. Indeed, Schurz himself in his later years had doubts as to the validity of his own conclusions.[82]
Schurz's conclusions may be summarized thus:
If nothing were necessary but to restore the machinery of government in the states lately in rebellion in point of form, the movements made to that end by the people of the South might be considered satisfactory. But if it is required that the Southern people should also accommodate themselves to the result of the war in point of spirit, those movements fall far short of what must be insisted upon....
The emancipation of the slaves is submitted to only in so far as chattel slavery in the old form could not be kept up. But although the freedman is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of society, and all independent state legislation will share the tendency to make him such. The ordinances abolishing slavery, passed by the conventions under pressure of circumstances, will not be looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of servitude.
Practical attempts on the part of the Southern people to deprive the negro of his rights as a freeman may result in bloody collisions, and will certainly plunge Southern society into restless fluctuations and anarchical confusion. Such evils can be prevented only by continuing the control of the National Government in the states lately in rebellion until free labor is fully developed and firmly established, and the advantages and blessings of the new order of things have disclosed themselves. This desirable result will be hastened by a firm declaration, on the part of the Government, that national control in the South will not cease until such results are secured....
The solution of the problem would be very much facilitated by enabling all the loyal and free-labor elements in the South to exercise a healthy influence upon legislation. It will hardly be possible to secure the freedman against oppressive class legislation and private persecution, unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political power.
It is fitting to notice here a letter written by Hon. J. L. M. Curry, of Alabama, to Senator Doolittle and read by him in the Senate on April 6, 1866.
I was [said Mr. Curry] a secessionist, for a while a member of the Confederate Congress, and afterward in the army, on the staff of generals, or in command of a regiment. It would be merest affectation to pretend that I was not somewhat prominent as a secessionist.... Having laid the predicate for my competency, I desire to aver, as a gentleman, and a Christian, I hope, that with large personal intercourse with the people and those who are suspected of rebel intentions, I never heard (of course, since the surrender) of any conspiracy or movement or society or purpose, secret or public, present or prospective, to overthrow the United States Government, to resist its authority, to reënslave the negroes, or in any manner to disturb the relations that now exist between the Southern States as constituent elements of the Federal Government and that Government, until I read of such intentions recently in Northern newspapers. With perfect certainty as to the truth of my affirmation, I can state that there is not a sane or sober man in Alabama who believes or expects that African slavery will be reëstablished. As unalterable facts, the people accept the abolition of slavery, the extinction of the right of secession, and the supremacy of the Federal Government. It is as idle, a thousand times more so, to speak of another contemplated resistance to Federal authority as to anticipate the overthrow of the British Government by the Fenians.[83]
Mr. Curry's words were true, but at the time when they were written the weight of testimony available at Washington and in the North generally was of a contrary sort, and Mr. Curry counted for no more at the national capital than any other disarmed secessionist. At a later period he became known to the North as one of the great benefactors of his time and country, especially noted for his labors in educating and upbuilding both races in the Southern States.[84]
FOOTNOTES:
[79] "For a man who had 'come from the people,' as he was fond of saying, and whose heart was always with the poor and distressed, Andrew Johnson was one of the neatest men in his dress and person I have ever known. During his three years in Nashville, in particular, he dressed in black broadcloth frock-coat and waistcoat and black doeskin trousers, and wore a silk hat. This had been his attire for thirty years, and for most of that time, whether as governor of Tennessee, member of Congress, or United States Senator, he had made all of his own clothes." (Benjamin C. Truman, Secretary to Andrew Johnson, in Century Magazine, January, 1913.)
[80] Cong. Globe, 1865-66, I, 42, 43.