There is, of course, a series of events leading up to this radical change in the institutions of the Republic, a history beginning before the formation of the Union itself. The first part was African slavery. Religious, moral and economic forces had acted upon serfdom, the more common sort of slavery in Europe, and aided by the resulting increase of vigor among the serfs themselves, had disintegrated it. But these forces either did not act upon the trade in Negro slaves, when profits to be obtained from that traffic filled the minds of merchants, or were helpless to stop it. The New World was not, like the Old, overcrowded, but in need of laborers—and the slaves were blacks. Tropical South America, the West Indies, and the hot belt of the United States absorbed hundreds of thousands of Negro slaves. All the forces above enumerated set to work again after a time and slavery once more began to disintegrate. In this country it had become firmly rooted in the Southern states, where the same American people who had fought in '76 for the freedom of two million white men, women and children fought as stubbornly to keep in slavery four million black men, women and children. But victory was again to crown the cause of freedom, and by the will of the victors, forced forward by the unbroken spirit of resistance of the conquered, these four millions of slaves were declared possessed of freedom, civil rights and political privileges.

Said Lord Shaftesbury to Charles the Second, when called on for his resignation as Lord Chancellor, "It is only to lay aside the gown and take up the sword." The South, defeated in arms, reversed the process, and laying down the musket, put on the gown of the law-maker, and began to accomplish by legislation, the reenslavement of the millions set free. Hampered in this, for a time by the armies and the northern civil officers, who obtained power largely by the suffrage of the colored people, and by the colored voters themselves, the Southern men waited for the withdrawal of the Union armies—an event hastened by outcry at home—and then taking out the side-arms, which the generous terms of surrender had permitted them to retain, they rapidly dispersed the opposing force, and took the reins of government again into their own hands. With musket in one hand to retain political power, and pen in the other to undo the Reconstruction legislation, they soon deprived the black millions of all their transitory political and civil rights. It is hard to see that anything remained to be done. Emancipation laws and proclamations to the contrary, the Negro seemed safely penned. But moral and economic forces were still at work, and the end was not yet reached.

The South could no longer close its eyes to the want of prosperity. In 1890, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, in spite of their 262,175 square miles and abundant resources, had but 8,346,667 people and 288,405,107 dollars worth of manufactured products. An equal territory in the States of the North, namely; Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio and Illinois with 260,823 square miles had 25,074,143 people and 6,484,643,842 dollars worth of manufactured products—which is to say, the Southern states had but one-third of the population, and one-twenty-second of the manufactures of the same area North. The South wanting prosperity began to seek ways of obtaining it. This led to the consideration of obstacles: and first among these was the large and economically inefficient colored population. It must be made, for want of other labor, productive, a contributory agent to the new industrial prosperity of the South—and not the less, cut off from any sort of control, even of the industries, which by its labor must mainly be built up. The problem was a difficult one, yet such as the South felt itself able to solve. And many in the North stood ready to help.

In 1890, however, came troubles so serious as to require a diversion of attention from economical to political problems. The Republican party pledge to secure for all citizens 'a free ballot and a fair count' was yet unredeemed; and in that year a debate broke out in Congress over the fulfilling of its promise, with an Elections bill as the means. Simultaneously, the Populist movement was growing to threatening proportions. Before this, the cry had been that the Negro by sheer numbers could dominate, if not prevented from doing so. But now there presented itself a new and more threatening danger. "In any state where the whites divide," said Mr. Tillman in the Senate in 1900, "and they have divided in every Southern State except mine and Mississippi—into Populists and Democrats—the Negro has been the balance of power." The Populist movement died, but this phantasm once evoked, of a black man poised at the centre of the party see-saw, continued to hover at the beck of its creators until again wanted. The occasion, this time a lasting one, has been found in the balance of the Republican and the Democratic parties in the "border" states. So in Maryland, for a while, a "doubtful" state, where the colored population is but one-fifth of the whole, a disfranchising law is justified, apparently, by the danger to good government of allowing the Republican party to obtain control. Again, in the county and town election contests, even in the Southern states where the Democratic party is in entire possession of the State government, this compact(?) and mobile(?) army of black voters occupies a position of such strategical importance that unless they be dislodged by the most radical method their mastery must be forever acknowledged(?). Now, to conclude, since a dozen colored voters might hold the balance of power in town or county, the bitter irony of the situation is overwhelming.[1] The South is simply driven by its own irrefutable(?) logic to total disfranchisement of the Negro, there being no safe stopping point short of the practical exclusion of the colored inhabitants of a dozen or more states from any part in the making or administering of the laws, national, state or municipal under which they live(!). All this the South, impelled by her honest desire(!) for good government, and resolutely turning her back upon past methods of fraud and violence,(!) means to accomplish legally—provided Congress and the Supreme Court throw over her naked but unalterable will the broad mantle of legality.

[1]In West Virginia there are, on the Census basis (958,800 = whole population, less 43,499-colored population = 915,301-white population, divided by 3.6 = ratio of white population, generally to white males of voting age.) 254,250 white voters; and (43,499 = colored population, divided by 4.3-ratio of colored population to colored male adults = 10,116 colored voters, of whom 32.3 per cent. are illiterate, = 3267 illiterate colored men,) but 3,267 illiterate colored voters, or about one eightieth of the electorate (257,517 divided by 3,267): yet, even though the national ticket threatened to be hurt by it, it was impossible to stifle the cry for disfranchisement of ignorant black voters as the paramount issue of the West Virginia democratic campaign of 1904.

We are reminded of the story of the princess, who wandering in rags, came to a palace and begged accommodation there befitting one of royal blood. The old queen, not sure that she was a princess, determined to test her veracity in this way: She lay a pea upon the floor and piled upon it a dozen feather-beds. If she felt the pea, it was plain that she was a true princess. Morning came none too soon for the unhappy lady, who confessed to the queen having spent a miserable night, something hard in her bed having bruised her till she was black and blue. No longer could the queen doubt that she was a real princess, for who else could have been so delicate. And she was forthwith married to the heir apparent to the throne. So the South acts on the belief that if she be absolutely intolerant of the slightest degree of political power in the hands of colored men, that the North must see in the very violence of her antipathy, the hopelessness of any other solution.

This happily settled, the South after fifteen years of uncertainty, hopes to be able to turn her attention to material problems. But though the Caesars may rob February of days to enrich July and August, the seasons remain unchanged. The economic and moral laws of the universe remain in operation and give assurance that no solution can be more than temporary in which the Negro is dealt with falsely and unjustly.

Meantime what had been the course of the Republican party, which, by its own declaration "had reconstructed the Union with freedom instead of slavery as its corner-stone?" Listen to the reading of the suffrage planks in the platforms of ten presidential campaigns:—

[1868.]

The guarantee by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude, and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States.