Some reaction after such enthusiasm—some relaxation of the sinews after such a tension, must be expected; but America is in no danger of sinking, like France, into political apathy and despair.
The most tremendous problem of all, is not the restoration of the Union, nor the discharge of fiscal liabilities, nor anything of a purely political kind; it is the re-organisation of society at the South. To this operation the eyes of all men may well be turned: it is perhaps the hardest ever undertaken by statesmen. Jamaica tells us with terrible emphasis what are the perils of a community composed of the ex-slave owner and the ex-slave. How can these perils be avoided? What will cleanse away the taint which seems not to quit the blood of the man who has owned slaves—or of his children—or of his children’s children? How, with the ineradicable difference of colour, to which fatal memories will long cling, and with the physical antipathy the existence of which it is vain to deny, can we hope for social fusion? Without social fusion, how can we hope for political equality? And without political equality, what security can there be for justice? Kindness and wisdom would cure, in course of time, the slowly receding vices of the slave. Fair wages, paid at set of sun, so that even his shortened vision may see his reward as he works, would in time teach him industry: education, in the course of two or three generations, would raise his intelligence, and give him the power of self guidance. But the kindness and wisdom that might do this, in whom are they to be found? As to the theories about the incurable indolence and the incurable ferocity of the negro,—they will claim attention when a particle of historical evidence has been produced in their
