Freed persons; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Southern States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950
It is, however, a peace resulting from a cool and dispassionate appeal to
reason, and not from any convictions of right or wrong; it has its origin
in the head, and not in the heart. Impotency and policy gave it birth, and
impotency, policy and hope keep it alive. It is not inspired by any higher
motives than these, and higher motives could hardly be expected to follow
immediately in the footsteps of armed insurrection. The hopes of the
people are fixed, as a matter of course, upon the President. The whites
hope and expect to recover the preponderating influence which they have
lost by the war, and which has been temporarily replaced by the military
authority throughout the State, and they receive with general satisfaction
the appointment of Mr. Perry as provisional governor of the State, and
regard it as a step toward their restoration to civil and political power.
Even those men who have taken the lead during the war, not only in the
heartiness and liberality of their support of the rebel cause, but also in
the bitterness of their denunciation of the national government and the
loyal people of the northern States, express themselves as entirely
satisfied with the shape which events are taking.
The colored population, on the contrary, or that portion of it which
moulds the feelings and directs the passions of the mass, look with
growing suspicion upon this state of affairs, and entertain the most
lively apprehensions with regard to their future welfare. They have no
fears of being returned to slavery, having the most implicit faith in our
assurance of its abolition for all time to come, but they think they see
the power which has held the lash over them through many generations again
being restored to their former masters, and they are impressed with a
greater or less degree of alarm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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