man came to
the conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army...
are the backbone and sinew of the South.... To the disbanded regiments
of the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great confidence
as the best and altogether the most hopeful element of the South, the
real basis of reconstruction and the material of worthy citizenship."
General John Tarbell, before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction,
testified that "there are, no doubt, disloyal and disorderly persons in
the South, but it is an entire mistake to apply these terms to a whole
people. I would as soon travel alone, unarmed, through the South as
through the North. The South I left is not at all the South I hear and
read about in the North. From the sentiment I hear in the North, I would
scarcely recognize the people I saw, and, except their politics, I liked
so well. I have entire faith that the better classes are friendly to the
Negroes."

Carl Schurz on the other hand was not so favorably impressed. "The
loyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people,"
he said, "consists in submission to necessity. There is, except in
individual instances, an entire absence of that national spirit which
forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." Another government
official in Florida was quite doubtful of the Southern whites. "I would
pin them down at the point of the bayonet," he declared, "so close that
they would not have room to wiggle, and allow intelligent colored people
to go up and vote in preference to them. The only Union element in the
South proper... is among the colored people. The whites will treat you
very kindly to your face, but they are deceitful. I have often thought,
and so expressed myself, that there is so much deception among the
people of the South since the rebellion, that if an earthquake should
open and swallow them up, I was fearful that the devil would be
dethroned and some of them take his place."

The point of view of the Confederate military leaders was exhibited by
General Wade Hampton in a letter to President Johnson and by General Lee
in his advice to Governor Letcher of Virginia. General Hampton wrote:
"The South unequivocally 'accepts the situation' in which she is placed.
Everything that she has done has been done in perfect faith, and in the
true and highest sense of the word, she is loyal. By this I mean that
she intends to abide by the laws of the land honestly, to fulfill