Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/365

benumbing effect upon the active energies of a people than such a tendency. I am far from saying that the South would have rivalled the North in productive activity and progress had slavery not existed. Climatic conditions would have prevented that; but surely the difference between the two sections of the country would have been far less. We have heard much from Southern men since the close of the civil war of the substantial benefits the abolition of slavery has conferred upon the South—of the impetus it has given to the spirit of enterprise in the opening and the exploitation of natural resources, the building up of industries, the enlargement of means of communication and the development of other agencies of civilization. All this is recognized to be owing to the removal—the partial removal at least—of the incubus of that “peculiar institution” which stupefied everything. And now the reactionists are striving again to burden the Southern people with another “peculiar institution,” closely akin to its predecessor in character, as it will be in its inevitable effects if fully adopted by the Southern people—that is, if the bulk of the laboring class is again to be kept in stupid subjection, without the hope of advancement and without the ambition of progress. For, as the old pro-slavery man was on principle hostile to general negro education, so the present advocate of semi-slavery is perfectly logical in his contempt for the general instruction of the colored people and in his desire to do away with the negro school. What the reactionist really wants is a negro just fit for the task of a plantation hand and for little, if anything, more, and with no ambition for anything beyond. Therefore, quite logically, the reactionist abhors the educated negro. In fact the political or social recognition of the educated negro is especially objectionable to him for the simple reason that it would be an encouragement of higher aspirations among