THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
wonted way in those regions which were not touched by the Union armies. They had heard of Mas'r Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in a more or less vague way, but did not know exactly what it meant and preferred to remain quietly at work and wait for further developments. But when the war was over, general emancipation became a well understood reality. The negro knew that he was a free man and the Southern white man found himself face to face with the problem of dealing with the negro as a free laborer. To most of the Southern whites this problem was utterly bewildering. Many of them, honest and well-meaning people, admitted to me with a sort of helpless stupefaction that their imagination was wholly incapable of grasping the fact that their former slaves were now free. And yet they had to deal with this perplexing fact, and practically to accommodate themselves to it, at once, without delay, if they were to have any crops that year.
Many of them would frankly recognize this necessity and begin in good faith to consider how they might meet it. But then they stumbled forthwith over a set of old prejudices which in their minds had acquired the stubborn force of convictions. They were sure the negro would not work without physical compulsion. They were sure the negro did not, and never would, understand the nature of a contract, and so on. Yes, they “accepted the situation.” Yes, they recognized that the negro was henceforth to be a free man. But could not some method of force he discovered and introduced, to compel the negro to work? It goes without saying that persons of such a way of thinking labored under a heavy handicap in going at a difficult task with a settled conviction that it was really “useless to try.” But even if they did try and found that the negro might after all be induced to work without physical com-
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