12
In responding for “The Statesman in Reconstruction,” Representative Fleming referred to the appointment of Mr. Schurz by President Johnson as Special Commissioner to examine into conditions at the South. The report of his findings and opinions, made as the result of this inquiry, while, in the judgment of the speaker, necessarily imbued with ideas in conflict with those generally held by the Southern people, was most fair in tone, and indicative of a determined purpose to seek for the truth wherever it might be found. Mr. Schurz's influence in the work of reconstruction was thus potent from the outset. He contended for the establishment and protection of a new system of free labor to take the place of the broken system of slave labor, but in all of his propositions he never failed to remember that the former masters were human as well as the freedmen, and that the interests of both should be considered in any scheme for the pacification and rehabilitation of the war-torn Southern country. Later, in 1868, he had written and proposed the first plank favoring general amnesty to be adopted by a national convention, and in 1872, when a member of the Senate, he had delivered a speech before that body that figured among the most powerful and effective utterances on the subject throughout the whole period of discussion. The speaker referred, in closing, to the independent position taken by Mr. Schurz on every question—both
