It was made after a somewhat prolonged investigation in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Department of the Gulf.

Mr.Schurz's conclusions were that the loyalty of the masses and of most of the leaders in the South "consists of submission to necessity." Except in individual instances, he found "an entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." He found that "the emancipation of the slaves is submitted to only in so far as chattel-slavery in the old form could not be kept up; and although the freeman is no longer considered the property of the individual master he is considered the slave of society, and all independent State legislation will share the tendency to make him such.

The ordinances abolishing slavery, passed by the conventions under the pressure of circumstances, will not be looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of servitude." "Practical attempts," Mr.Schurz continued, "on the part of the Southern people to deprive the negro of his rights as a freedman may result in bloody collision, and will certainly plunge Southern society into resistless fluctuations and anarchical confusion." These evils, in the opinion of Mr.Schurz, "can be prevented only by continuing the control of the National Government in the States lately in rebellion, until free labor is fully developed and firmly established.

This desirable result will be hastened by a firm declaration on the part of the Government that national control in the South will not cease until such results are secured." It was Mr.
Schurz's judgment that "it will hardly be possible to secure the freedman against oppressive legislation and private persecution unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political power." He felt sure of the fact that the "extension of the franchise to the colored people, upon the development of free labor and upon the security of human rights in the South, being the principal object in view, the objections raised upon the ground of the ignorance of the freedmen become unimportant." Mr.Schurz made an intelligent argument in favor of negro suffrage.

He was persuaded that the Southern people would never grant suffrage to the negro voluntarily, and that "the only manner in which the Southern people can be induced to grant to the freemen some measure of self-protecting power, in the form of suffrage, is to make it a condition precedent to re-admission." He remarked upon the extraordinary delusion then pervading a portion of the public mind regarding the deportation of the freedmen.