THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
The last chance of an accommodation with the Republican party was now utterly gone. It had become manifest that he was not stronger than Congress, but that Congress with its two-thirds majority against him was stronger than he, and that element among the party politicians that was prone to join the stronger side for personal advantage, now rallied largely against him. But worse than all, the reactionists in the South who were bent upon curtailing the freedom of the emancipated negroes as much as possible, received his veto of the Civil Rights Bill with shouts of delight. Believing him now unalterably opposed to the bestowal of equal civil rights, such as were specified in that bill, upon the freedmen, they hailed President Johnson as their champion more loudly than ever. Undisturbed by the defeat of the veto, which they looked upon as a mere temporary accident, they easily persuaded themselves that the President, aided by the Administration Republicans and the Democratic party at the North, would at last surely prevail, and that now they might safely deal with the negro and the labor question in the South as they pleased. The reactionary element felt itself encouraged by the President's attitude to the point of foolhardiness. Legislative enactments and municipal ordinances and regulations tending to reduce the colored people to a state of semi-slavery multiplied at a lively rate. The reports of cruelties perpetrated upon freedmen increased in number from day to day. The tone of the press and of public speakers in the South rose to a high pitch of impatient peremptoriness. Measures taken for the protection of the emancipated slaves were indiscriminately denounced in the name of the Constitution of the United States as acts of insufferable tyranny. The instant admission to seats in the National Congress of Senators and Representatives from the “States lately in rebellion” was loudly demanded
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