[79] Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 352.
[80] Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 372.
[81] Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 339
[82] American State Papers, Foreign Relations, Vol. VI, page 855.
[83] Four Statutes at Large, page 269.
THE NEGRO IN POLITICS[1]
A treatise on the Negro in politics since the emancipation of the race may be divided into three periods; that of the Reconstruction, when the Negroes in connection with the interlopers and sympathetic whites controlled the Southern States, the one of repression following the restoration of the radical whites to power, and the new day when the Negro counts as a figure in politics as a result of his worth in the community and his ability to render the parties and the government valuable service.
While the echoes of the Civil War were dying away, the South attempted to reduce the Negro to a position of peonage by the passage of the black codes. Many northern men led by Sumner and Stevens, who at first tried to secure the cooperation of the best whites, became indignant because of this attitude of the South and were reduced to the necessity of forcing Negro suffrage upon the South at the point of the bayonet, believing that the only way to insure the future welfare of the Negro was to safeguard it by giving him the ballot. Under the protection of these military governments, the Negroes and certain more or less fortunate whites gained political control. The southern white men, weary and disgusted because of the outcome of their attempts at secession, maintained an attitude of sullenness and indifference toward the new regime and accordingly offered at first very little opposition to the Negro control of politics. The Negroes, upon their securing the right of suffrage, however, turned at once to their former masters for political leadership,[2] but the majority of these southern gentlemen refused to "lower their dignity" by political association with the Negroes. The few southern gentlemen who did affiliate with the Negroes were dubbed "scalawags" by their former friends and cast out of southern society.