What was done during the year immediately following the surrender of the rebel armies was done at Southern suggestion, done by Southern men, done under the belief that the President's policy would protect them in it, done with a fixed and merciless determination that the gracious act of emancipation should not bring amelioration to the colored race, and that the pseudo-philanthropy, as they regarded the anti-slavery feeling in the North, should be brought into contempt before the world.

They deliberately resolved to prove to the public opinion of mankind that the negro was fit only to be a chattel, and that in his misery and degradation, sure to follow the iniquitous enactments for the new form of his subjection, it would be proved that he had lost and not gained by the conferment of freedom among a population where it was impossible for him to enjoy it.

They resolved also to prove that slavery was the normal and natural state of the negro; that the Northern people, in taking any other ground, had been deceived by a sentiment and had been following a chimera; that the Southern people alone understood the question, and that interference with them by war or by law should end in establishing their justification before the public opinion of the world.

The Southern men believed and boasted that they would subject to general reproach and expose to open shame that whole class of intermeddlers and fanatics (as they termed opponents of slavery) who had destroyed so many lives and wasted so much treasure in attempting the impossible and, even if possible, the undesirable.
There can be no doubt that the objectionable and cruel legislation of the Southern States--examples of which might be indefinitely cited in addition to those already given--exerted a strong influence upon Mr.
Seward's mind.

It is well known that, to those who were on intimate terms with him, he expressed a sorrowful surprise that the South should respond with so ill a grace to the liberal and magnanimous tenders of sympathy and friendship from the National Administration.
He could not comprehend why confidence did not beget confidence, why generosity should not call forth generosity in return.