THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
Johnson that I was willing to undertake the journey. In order that everything should be clear between us, I repeated to him what I had stated in former conversations and correspondence, that, so far as I was then informed, I considered the reconstruction policy ill-advised and fraught with great danger, but that if my observations should show this view to be erroneous, no pride of opinion would prevent me from saying so. I would consider it my only duty to tell the truth. President Johnson cordially declared himself satisfied and repeated his expressions of entire confidence. The Secretary of War ordered an officer of one of the New York Volunteer regiments still in the service, Captain Orlemann, a gentleman of ability and pleasing manners, to accompany me as my secretary, and all military officers in the Gulf States to give me all the aid and assistance I might require. Thus equipped I set out and arrived at Hilton Head in South Carolina on the 15th of July.
On board of the steamer which carried me there, I had a conversation with a Southern gentleman which might have served as an epitome of the most important of my subsequent observations touching the same subjects. He was a handsome young man, something over thirty; had served as an officer in the Confederate army since 1861; had been captured in battle, fallen ill, spent some time in a Northern hospital, and was now on his way home, not having heard from his family for several months. He did not seem to be a highly educated man, but there was an air of natural refinement about him which invited sympathy. He had not seen much of the North, but enough to feel its immense superiority over the South in all the elements of power. He therefore frankly “accepted” the defeat of the South. He was, or, as he said, had been at the beginning of the war, a prosperous planter, owning about 90 slaves and 4000 acres of land, not far from Savannah. But what was he
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