THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
confused, perplexing and perilous of conditions—the condition of a defeated insurrection leaving irritated feelings behind it, and of a great social revolution only half accomplished, leaving antagonistic forces face to face. The necessity of the presence of a restraining and guiding higher authority could hardly have been more obvious. This was the general purport of the opinions of military and civil officers, as well as other persons of consequence which I had collected and submitted to the President, and with which my own observations and reflections entirely agreed.
During the first six weeks of my travels in the South I did not receive a single word from the President or any member of the Administration. But through the newspapers and the talk going on around me, I learned that the President had taken active measures to put the “States lately in rebellion” into a self-governing condition—that is to say, that he appointed “provisional governors,” that he directed those provisional governors to call conventions for the purpose of reviving the State constitutions in harmony with the new order of things, the conventions to be elected, according to the plan laid down in the North Carolina proclamation, by the “loyal” white citizens, an overwhelming majority of whom were persons who had adhered to the rebellion and had then taken the prescribed oath of allegiance. On the same basis the provisional governors were to set in motion again the whole machinery of civil government as rapidly as possible. When, early in July, I took leave of the President to set out on my tour of investigation, he, as already mentioned, assured me that the North Carolina proclamation was not to be regarded as a plan definitely resolved upon; that it was merely tentative and experimental; that before proceeding further he would “wait and see”; and that to aid him by furnishing him information
[ 185 ]
