To obviate this gross injustice, and to protect these wards of the nation, to whom its honor was solemnly pledged, it was necessary that they should be permitted to share in the government, that loyalty might, at least, have equal rights with disloyalty, the oppressed an equal voice with the oppressor. This must be done, or the other alternative adopted,—that of arming the negro and bringing on a war of races, which would not have ceased till those States should have, indeed, become desolate and without inhabitants.
Congress had no ambition to reënact the bloody scenes of St. Domingo, and they felt that with the kindly and placable nature of the African, peace, quiet, and good order would be sooner secured by giving him the ballot than in any other way, and the event is even now demonstrating the wisdom of their decision.
The same able writer from whom we have already quoted, after spending some months in the South, says:—
“The freedmen have surprised me by their native shrewdness and good sense, their cautious and submissive behavior, and the keen, intelligent interest they take in their new political privileges. If they were one tenth as vindictive and contemptuous in their manner toward the whites as the whites toward them, a war of races would have ensued long ago. From close observation, I believe them to be humbler in deportment than before emancipation. As a class they are anxious to work and get on in the world. They are more industrious than their late masters. And though the word has been abused, they are as loyal to the government as it is possible for men of their capacities to be. They would respond to a national summons to arms with alacrity and enthusiasm. By their votes in their conventions they have shown that they feel no hatred toward their old oppressors, and ask nothing beyond security for the future.
“Scratch a Southerner, and you find an intolerant. He is not willing to have you vote as your conscience dictates. Defy his local despotisms, and you will be socially ostracized; your name will be published in a black-list; you will be sneered at and insulted. If you are a Northern man, acquire citizenship by the legal period of residence, and get nominated to office, you will be ridiculed as a Yankee adventurer—a ‘carpet-bagger.’ Witness the Alabama election in February: witness the Southern newspaper treatment of all the constitutional conventions.
“How about Southern loyalty?
“About three fourths of the Southern white people are passively disloyal. Could it be otherwise? For four years they rained death on the National flag and the National uniform. They shot at and cursed them. In every church in the Confederacy they prayed and supplicated with fervor and with tears, to have them go down in disgrace. Can it be that their gorge does not rise now at their sight?
“On the boat coming up the Potomac from Aquia Creek, I heard a Southerner confess that though he tried to subdue the emotion, he still felt a hatred of the Stars and Stripes. He had fought under Lee from first to last, and during that time had seen the flag so often in battle when the army of the Potomac swept down upon him and his companions in arms, that he feared he would never again be able to look upon it as his flag.
“The dominant class in the South never was republican in traits, tastes, or habits. The revolution now going on in its industries and system of labor tend to make it so, but as long as this generation lives the change cannot be complete. The Southern man and woman still deem themselves a better order of beings than the Yankees. They will die in that faith. The vanity is ingrain.
“I have been astonished to find how generally the Southerners believe the North to be on the verge of civil convulsion. Reading only their own newspapers and the most violent Copperhead journals in the North, they are firmly convinced that nothing is more likely to happen than the embroilment of the Western with the Middle and New England States. This delusion is shared by thousands of the most intelligent men in the South. That they would delight in such a calamity is as certain as the fact that the next gale that sweeps from the North will not take to them ‘the clash of resounding arms.’ They cannot understand the elastic temper and wholesome tolerance of the North, where elections come and go, crises ripen and decline, with no thought of bloodshed, nor black-lists, nor social disdain, contempt, and persecution.