On the Freedmen

Both Generals Halleck and Grant regarded the

slave as still a slave, only that the labor of the slave belonged

to his owner, if faithful to the Union, or to the United States, if

the master had taken up arms against the Government, or adhered to

the fortunes of the rebellion.

(In Sherman's camp, a southern slave owner) was usually

permitted to see his slave, and, if he could persuade him

to return home, it was permitted.

I doubted the wisdom of at once clothing them with the

elective franchise, without some previous preparation and

qualification; and then realized the national loss in the death at

that critical moment of Mr. Lincoln, who had long pondered over the

difficult questions involved, who, at all events, would have been

honest and frank, and would not have withheld from his army

commanders at least a hint that would have been to them a guide.

It was plain to me, therefore, that the manner of his assassination

had stampeded the civil authorities in Washington, had unnerved

them, and that they were then undecided as to the measures

indispensably necessary to prevent anarchy at the South.

***

Mr. Chase, with whom I had a long and

frank conversation, during which he explained to me the confusion

caused in Washington by the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the

sudden accession to power of Mr. Johnson, who was then supposed to

be bitter and vindictive in his feelings toward the South, and the

wild pressure of every class of politicians to enforce on the new

President their pet schemes. He showed me a letter of his own,

which was in print, dated Baltimore, April 11th, and another of

April 12th, addressed to the President, urging him to recognize the

freedmen as equal in all respects to the whites. He was the first

man, of any authority or station, who ever informed me that the

Government of the United States would insist on extending to the

former slaves of the South the elective franchise, and he gave as a

reason the fact that the slaves, grateful for their freedom, for

which they were indebted to the armies and Government of the North,

would, by their votes, offset the disaffected and rebel element of

the white population of the South.

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