e negro voluntarily, and that "the only manner in which the Southern
people can be induced to grant to the freemen some measure of
self-protecting power, in the form of suffrage, is to make it a condition
precedent to re-admission." He remarked upon the extraordinary
delusion then pervading a portion of the public mind regarding the
deportation of the freedmen. "The South," he said, "stands in need of
an increase and not a diminution of its laboring-force, to repair the
losses and disasters of the last four years. Much is said of importing
European laborers and Northern men. This is the favorite idea among
planters, who want such emigrants to work on their plantations, but
they forget that European and Northern men will not come to the South
to serve as hired hands on the plantations, but to acquire property for
themselves; and even if the whole European emigration, at the rate of
two hundred thousand a year, were turned into the South, leaving not
a single man for the North and West, it would require between fifteen
and twenty years to fill the vacuum caused by the deportation of
freedmen."

Mr. Schurz desired not to be understood as saying that "there are no
well-meaning men among those who are compromised in the Rebellion.
There are many, but neither their number nor their influence is strong
enough to control the manifest tendency of the popular spirit."
Apprehending that his report might be antagonized by evidence of a
contrary spirit shown in the South by the action of their conventions,
Mr. Schurz declared that it was "dangerous to be led by such evidence
into any delusion." "As to the motives," said Mr. Schurz, "upon which
the Southern people acted when abolishing slavery (in their
conventions) and their understanding of the bearings of such acts, we
may safely accept the standard they have set up for themselves." The
only argument of justification was that "they found themselves in a
situation where _they could do no better_." A prominent Mississippian
(General W. L. Brandon) said in a public card, according to Mr. Schurz,
"My honest conviction is that we must accept the situation until we
can once more get control of our own State affairs. . . . I must submit
for the time to evils I cannot remedy." Mr. Schurz expressed his
conviction that General Brandon had "only put in print what a majority
of the people say in more emphatic language."

The report of Mr. Schurz was quoted even more triumphantly by t