What need, then, could there be to point out the further danger, inseparable from this state of affairs, that, being compelled to such reluctant abandonment of their life-long policy, it would be equally hard to bring them to tax themselves to pay for such compulsion? In other words, that being whipped, and thus driven to give up the points in issue, they would be still less ready to pay our bills for the whipping. Politicians, whose status depended on the admission of the Louisiana members to Congress, professed great readiness to pay the National debt; but I did not hear one private citizen make a similar expression. They did their best in the rural districts to discredit the National currency; till the military interfered, they did the same in some of the city banks; and throughout the early part of the winter, outside the moneyed centers, the notes of the National banks were held at a discount of twenty to fifty per cent.
The politics of all Louisianians, (except a body of Union-men-from-the-first, less than five thousand in number,) as full and freely expressed up to the time when Congress refused to receive their members, might be thus summed up:
They freely acknowledged that they had been badly defeated.
They acknowledged, in consequence, the fact (not the rightfulness) of the destruction of slavery.
In the same way, and with the same limitation, they admitted the impossibility of secession.
These they regarded as all the concessions which they ought to make, in order to be restored to their old relations and powers in the Union. On the other hand,
They honestly disbelieved in the capacity of the late slaves to support or to protect themselves. Therefore, their tendencies were to the establishment of some sort of enforced labor system; and to the refusal of any right to the negroes to testify in courts,[[60]] or of relief from other civil disabilities, which made the gift of freedom to them a mockery.
And, honestly believing themselves right in the outset of the quarrel in which they had been worsted, they were ready to array weighty influences in favor of an ultimate repudiation of the National debt.
The question, therefore, for the Washington statesmen to decide was a simple one. Should these positions of the Rebels be taken as satisfactory, and should they be thereupon restored to civil power? Or should further guarantees be exacted, and reorganization delayed until they were furnished?
In the one case, the work of the Provisional Governments might be accepted. In the other, it was necessary either to give suffrage to the negro, or to delay reorganization till time had elapsed for passions to cool, and opinions, based on old facts, to conform to the new ones.