[Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) by James Gillespie Blaine]@TWC D-Link book
Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2)

CHAPTER VII
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"The South," he said, "stands in need of an increase and not a diminution of its laboring-force, to repair the losses and disasters of the last four years.

Much is said of importing European laborers and Northern men.

This is the favorite idea among planters, who want such emigrants to work on their plantations, but they forget that European and Northern men will not come to the South to serve as hired hands on the plantations, but to acquire property for themselves; and even if the whole European emigration, at the rate of two hundred thousand a year, were turned into the South, leaving not a single man for the North and West, it would require between fifteen and twenty years to fill the vacuum caused by the deportation of freedmen." Mr.Schurz desired not to be understood as saying that "there are no well-meaning men among those who are compromised in the Rebellion.
There are many, but neither their number nor their influence is strong enough to control the manifest tendency of the popular spirit." Apprehending that his report might be antagonized by evidence of a contrary spirit shown in the South by the action of their conventions, Mr.Schurz declared that it was "dangerous to be led by such evidence into any delusion." "As to the motives," said Mr.Schurz, "upon which the Southern people acted when abolishing slavery (in their conventions) and their understanding of the bearings of such acts, we may safely accept the standard they have set up for themselves." The only argument of justification was that "they found themselves in a situation where _they could do no better_." A prominent Mississippian (General W.L.Brandon) said in a public card, according to Mr.Schurz, "My honest conviction is that we must accept the situation until we can once more get control of our own State affairs.

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