THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
opinion myself—not as if I had believed in the sinister revolutionary designs of Mr. Johnson, but because I thought that the presence of Mr. Johnson in the presidential office encouraged among the white people of the South hopes and endeavors which, the longer they were indulged in, the more grievous the harm they would do to both races. It cannot indeed be said that President Johnson failed to execute the reconstruction laws enacted by Congress by refusing to perform the duties they imposed upon him, such as the appointment of the commanders of military divisions. He even effectively opposed, through his able and accomplished Attorney-General, Mr. Stanbery, the attempts of two Southern governors to stop the enforcement of the Reconstruction Act by the legal process of injunction. But the mere fact that he was believed to favor the reactionary element in the South and would do all in his power to let it have its way, was in itself an influence constantly inflaming the passions kindled by mischievous hopes.
The condition of things in the South had become deplorable in the extreme. Had the reconstruction measures enacted by Congress, harsh as they were, been imposed upon the Southern people immediately after the war, when the people were stunned by their overwhelming defeat, and when there was still some apprehension of bloody vengeance to be visited upon the leaders of the rebellion—as was, for instance, witnessed in Hungary in 1849 after the collapse of the great insurrection,—those measures would have been accepted as an escape from something worse. And had they been accompanied with a generous amnesty and with the assured prospect that the sooner the white people of the South accommodated themselves in good faith to the new order of things, the sooner their States would recover their self-government at home and their constitutional participation in the National Government, it is
[ 253 ]
