ual voters instead of population.
Schurz had remained three months in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, and to him "treason, under existing
circumstances, does not appear odious in the South. The people are not
impressed with any sense of its criminality. And there is yet among
the Southern people an utter absence of national feeling.... While
accepting the abolition of slavery, they think that some species of
serfdom, peonage, or other form of compulsory labour is not slavery,
and may be introduced without a violation of their pledge." Schurz,
therefore, recommended negro suffrage as "a condition precedent to
readmission."[1045]

[Footnote 1045: Senate Ex. Doc. No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Session.]

On the contrary, General Grant, who had spent a couple of weeks in the
South upon the invitation of the President, reported that the mass of
thinking men accepted conditions in good faith; that they regarded
slavery and the right to secede as settled forever, and were anxious
to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible;
that "while reconstructing they want and require protection from the
government. They are in earnest in wishing to do what is required by
the government, not humiliating to them as citizens, and if such a
course was pointed out they would pursue it in good faith."[1046]

[Footnote 1046: McPherson, _History of Reconstruction_, pp. 67-68.]

The North had been too happy over the close of the war and the return
of its soldiers to anticipate the next step, but when Thaddeus Stevens
of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Radicals, opened the discussion in
Congress on December 10 (1865), the people quickly saw the drift of
things. Stevens contended that hostilities had severed the original
contract between the Southern States and the Union, and that the
former, in order to return to the Union, must come in as new States
upon terms made by Congress and approved by the President. In like
manner he argued that negroes, if denied suffrage, should be excluded
from the basis of representation, thus giving the South 46
representatives instead of 83. "But why should slaves be excluded?"
demanded Stevens. "This doctrine of a white man's government is as
atrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice
to everlasting fame, and, I fear, to everlasting fire."[1047]

[Footnote 1047: _Congressional Globe_, Vol. 37, Part 1, pp. 73-74.]

Stevens' speech, putting