IV.

RECONSTRUCTION AND THE NEGRO.

THE Condition of the colored race of the South has been, for at least forty years, the leading question in our politics. For the most part it has been an unwelcome question, forcing itself into prominence and compelling attention against the choice and interest of most of our political leaders and their followers. The two forces which would otherwise have shaped our political ends-commerce and empire-have feared and hated this issue. The business interests of the country have constantly deprecated its agitation; the pride of empire, the sentiment of nationality, has always deplored its existence and struggled to banish it from the political field. The statesmen who from 1835 to 1860 held the foremost places of political honor and influence were engaged in a continuous effort to settle it by superficial compromises. Their successors at the North, with comparatively few exceptions, refused practically to recognize its essential and controlling power except under the final stress of unavoidable necessity. The same influences were strongly felt at the close of the war. Not a few of the leaders of the party which had pushed the conflict of arms to a successful close resumed the old temper of compromise in dealing with the new phases which this question then presented. Business and the desire for a formal national unity loudly demanded the restoration of the South without further changes than such as the war had actually accomplished.

Throughout this long conflict, the history of which is too fresh to need fuller statement, the nature of the issue touched and enlisted the deepest forces that affect human society. It was primarily an ethical question, a strict question of moral right and wrong. No economical or political tests could alone decide it. Conscience and the moral sense claimed jurisdiction of the question whether the colored race should be treated as men or as brutes, as brethren or as aliens and outcasts from the human family. The VOL. CXXVIII.-NO. 267. 11

moral convictions of the North would permit no settlement which did not recognize the complete manhood of this race. The stubborn and fanatic bigotry of the South would consent to no settlement which did not leave the political power of the States exclusively in the hands of the white race. Under these influences and circumstances the question, by what methods conformable to our system of government the civil rights belonging generally to other citizens might be practically secured to the colored race, became, in the judgment of a majority of the people, the most serious political problem growing out of the war. The result was the enactment by Congress, over the President's veto, of the reconstruction act of March 2, 1867, making it the condition of the restoration of the seceding States that new constitutions should be adopted, framed by "delegates elected by the male citizens, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition," and securing to all such persons the elective franchise. Under the provisions of this act all the seceding States were finally restored to their practical relations to the Union.

In the light of present results, the policy of universal suffrage thus enforced at the South is condemned not only by those who originally opposed it, but by many who were hitherto its advocates. It becomes, therefore, an appropriate inquiry, whether universal suffrage at the South, or especially what is commonly called negro suffrage, was a mistake. Such an inquiry should be made, if possible, without reference to partisan opinions or interests. The present condition of the colored race of the South can not be viewed with toleration by any right-minded man who is acquainted with the facts. It is certain, too, from the nature of the question itself, as well as its close relations to all our public interests, that it will remain, as heretofore, an issue which can not be avoided. Settlements may be attempted which shall again leave this race to its fate, to an unaided and friendless struggle with the hostile forces which surround it; but such settlements will settle nothing. In the mean time it is well to consider whether whatever degree of failure may be fairly said to characterize the present results of the plan of Southern reconstruction is due either to the principle applied in the general enfranchisement of the colored race, or to the incapacity of that race to properly exercise the rights conferred.

In determining the correctness of the principle adopted in the enfranchisement of the colored race, it is essential to recall the chief features of the situation when that measure was adopted.

A war

of four years, with its enormous sacrifices of life and property, had just ended. The cause of the war was the existence under the Government of the republic of the system of chattel slavery. Aside from this system the Government was essentially republican. All other leading influences had, for more than three quarters of a century, tended toward its harmonious growth, development, and consolidation. Territory and population had increased beyond precedent. A commanding position had been reached among the nations. All the elements of national prosperity and greatness had been developed to a high degree. Slavery, the one anti-republican influence, had put at hazard all this growth and glory. It had struck at the life of the nation. The struggle had agonized the land. The plain and inevitable lesson of this experience was, that our Government, to be safe, must be self-consistent; that, in Mr. Lincoln's words, "this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free"; that no anti-republican element can be safely suffered to remain in the fabric of our Government.

This lesson was strongly enforced by the influence of the great principles which inspired the founders of our Government, and still constituted the professed faith of the republic. By those principles the nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Except in the slave States the suffrage had been the sign and safeguard of that civil equality contemplated by the fathers. The extension of the suffrage had kept even pace with the progress of our most prosperous and enlightened communities. The enjoyment by all citizens of the right of suffrage was therefore regarded as the true corner-stone of our Government as well as the best if not the only guarantee of individual freedom. In fixing the political conditions of the seceding States, the traditions and principles of our Government united in pointing to universal suffrage as the true defense of public welfare and personal rights.

But, at the time of which we speak, disloyalty to the national Government characterized the whole white population of the South. The weapons of armed rebellion had but just been wrenched from their hands. To permit the political power of the restored States to be wielded exclusively by this class, was to invite the recurrence of the dangers so lately experienced. A basis of loyalty must be found on which to build the new governments. The colored race alone furnished this indispensable condition of reconstruction. Their loyalty to the Union was undoubted. It was deep, passionate, unfaltering. If, then, the conquered communities of the South

were to be restored to political life and to resume their position as States, the logic of republican principles, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the logic of events and surrounding circumstances, alike pointed to the immediate enfranchisement of the colored race as the chief feature in a wise plan of reconstruction. Gradual enfranchisement could not meet the conditions then existing. Tests of property or education, if ever wise or admissible, under our theory of Government, were clearly inadmissible here. The application of these tests would exclude those whose influence and participation could alone insure a republican basis for the new governments and the political predominance of those who were loyal to the General Government.

Other considerations led to the same conclusions. It was believed, as the result of our political experience as a whole, that the best method of dealing with the so-called "dangerous classes"— those who have, for the most part, neither property nor education was to admit them to the full privileges of citizenship. Such, with slight exceptions hardly requiring mention, had been the policy adopted in all the remaining States. It was believed, upon the same authority, that the exercise of the rights of free citizens was the best school for the education of the citizen in the proper discharge of the duties imposed by his rights. These beliefs were the results of experience. They were not theories merely. They were the practical, working rules by which our most successful political communities had carried on the business of government. Those who shaped the plan of reconstruction were convinced that the civil rights and future welfare of the colored race demanded that the ballot should be placed in its hands. They felt that the national Government was charged with the duty of recognizing and securing, so far as legislation could go, the complete civil and political equality of the colored race with the other races under our Government. This was especially due to that race by reason of its whole previous history in this country, as well as its peculiar position at the close of the war. But it was not sentiment alone that guided to this result. All other policies were open to insuperable objections. Direct military supervision of the South, the continuance of the abnormal condition existing from 1865 to 1867, or the return to power of those who had previously exercised exclusive political control, were the only remaining policies. Neither of these policies could be justified by reason or experience. That temporary evils would arise from the

immediate enfranchisement of the colored race no man doubted, but the men who supported the measure believed, with Macaulay, that "there is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces-and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day; he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. . . . Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever." They believed, with Mackintosh, that "justice is the permanent interest of all men, and of all commonwealths," and that "the love of liberty is the only source and guard of the tranquillity and greatness of America." They believed, with Abraham Lincoln, "All honor to Jefferson; to a man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression." To men of real faith in the principles of our government, to men who loved and practiced justice, who held that governments exist for the good of all the people, the immediate and unconditional enfranchisement of the colored race of the South was an act and policy supported by the highest sanctions of political justice and civil prudence.

The charges now brought with most frequency and apparent effect against this policy are, first, that it was unjust and cruel to the white people of the South thus to subject them to negro rule; and, second, that the enfranchisement of the colored race was a deliberate giving over of society to the control of ignorance, a reversal of the order of Nature and Providence which demands that society shall rest on intelligence and capacity, not on ignorance and inexperience.

To the first charge the reply is that colored suffrage was not the subjection of the white race to negro rule. The white race retained its suffrage, with all its immense advantages of property and education. Colored suffrage was simply placing the two races on the