In this document, Carl Schurz, a member of the moderate Liberal Republican faction, illustrates the competing imperatives facing Congressional Republicans after the Civil War.  On the one hand, was an ardent belief in the principle of states’ rights federalism, or the notion that liberty is best protected by limited interference of the national government into state and local affairs – in Henry David Thoreau’s words, that “that government is best, which governs least.”  On the other hand was the need to guarantee that the system of slavery would be abolished in practice as well as in law.  In this letter to President Andrew Johnson, Schurz offers his solution to the dilemma.

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The interference of the national authority in the home concerns of the southern States would be rendered less necessary, and the whole problem of political and social reconstruction be much simplified, if, while the masses lately arrayed against the government are permitted to vote, the large majority of those who were always loyal . . . were not excluded from all influence upon legislation. . . . In the right to vote we would find the best permanent protection against oppressive class-legislation, as well as against individual persecution. . . .  It is a notorious fact that the rights of a man of some political power are far less exposed to violation than those of one who is, in matter of public interest, completely subject to the will of others. . . .  The effect of 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 on the ground of the ignorance of the freedmen become unimportant.

Source:  Carl Schurz to President Andrew Johnson, 1865, in Walter L. Fleming, ed., Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational and Industrial, 1865 to the Present Time (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1907), I, pp. 95-96.

Document 4.15.2: Carl Schurz’s letter to President Andrew Johnson, 1865