The Negro as a factor in reconstruction, moreover, instituted education at the expense of the public. Through the establishment of public schools with well equipped buildings and prepared teachers they removed from that system the stigma formerly attached to persons[13] educating their children at public expense. They, therefore, made of education a foundation upon which real democracy must build. It is only short sightedness on the part of writers to infer that because the Negro was in a few years thereafter deprived of the ballot that the good work which was done during the years that they were permitted to participate in the affairs of these States could be so easily overthrown, especially so when this progressive part of the program of the reconstructed governments which the restored whites at first abandoned has later been taken up and carried out.
Although weakened by the reaction of the North against the methods employed by politicians in maintaining the reconstructed governments at the South, which moved President Hayes to withdraw the troops from that area, the Negroes were still of some concern to the Republicans. To retain their support the Republicans often spoke of foisting upon the South the Force Bill to guarantee fair elections but rather abandoned the Negro to the fate of working out his own salvation with his oppressors. In all of the campaigns up to 1888 there was the usual waving of the "bloody shirt" to array the Negro against the South and of urging the Negro to vote the Republican ticket to pay the debt he owed the party for his freedom, hypocritically threatening also to undo many of the things which had been done to the Negro since Reconstruction. There was no sincerity in these vote-getting declarations, however, and the Negro in the South remained politically doomed.
Nothing will better bring out this treatment of the Negro by the Republican party than a study of the consideration given the race in the various platforms of that party following the Civil war. The Republicans in the convention of 1868 declared themselves in sympathy with all oppressed peoples struggling for their rights and recognized the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence as a true foundation of democratic government. That same year, however, the Democratic party recognized the question of slavery and secession as having been settled but denounced Negro supremacy.[14]
In 1872 the platform of the Republican party was somewhat more outspoken. It carried a reference to the suppression of the rebellion, the emancipation of four million slaves, the grant of equal citizenship and the establishment of universal suffrage. It said, moreover, that "neither law nor its administration should attempt any discrimination in respect to citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude.[15] The Liberal Republicans, rallying in a different quarter that year, declared in their platform their belief in the equality of all men before the law and the duty of the government in all its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all of whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political. The Liberal Republicans pledged themselves to maintain the union of States, emancipation, and enfranchisement and to oppose any reopening of the questions settled by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. They advocated the removal of the disabilities of Confederates, the establishment of civil government at the South, universal amnesty, and impartial suffrage.[16]
In 1876 the Negro was given further mention by the various parties. The Prohibitionists took the lead in the declaration for equal suffrage and eligibility to office without distinction of race, religious creed, property or sex.[17] The Republicans referred in their platform to the permanent restoration of the southern section to the Union and the complete protection of all citizens in the free enjoyment of all their rights as an issue to which the Republican party stood sacredly pledged. "The power to provide for the enforcement of the principles embodied by the recent constitutional amendments," continues the platform, "is vested by those amendments in the Congress of the United States, and we declare it to be a solemn obligation of the legislative and executive departments of government to put into immediate and vigorous exercise all their constitutional powers for removing any just cause of discontent on the part of any class, and for securing to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political, and public rights. To this end we imperatively demand a congress and a chief executive whose courage and fidelity to these duties are placed beyond dispute or recall."[18]
The National Democratic platform of that year, however, spoke for the democracy of the whole country and declared its faith in the permanence of the Federal Union, and devotion to the Constitution of the United States with its amendments universally accepted as a final settlement of the controversies that engendered the Civil War; but took a bold stand for reform as necessary to rebuild and establish in the hearts of the whole people of the Union eleven years ago happily rescued from the danger of a secession of States but now to be severed from a corrupt centralism which after inflicting upon ten States the rapacity of carpet bag tyrannies, had "honey-combed the offices of the Federal government itself with the contagion of misrule and locked fast the prosperity of an industrious people in the paralysis of hard times."[19]
In 1880 The Republican party made no particular mention of the grievances of the Negroes but recited its record in suppressing the rebellion, reconstructing the Union with freedom instead of slavery as its corner stone, the transformation of four million human beings from the likeness of things to the rank of citizens and removing Congress from the infamous work of hunting fugitive slaves and charging it to see that slavery shall not exist. It declared, moreover, that the South must be divided by the peaceful agencies of the ballot that all opinions might there find free expression and to this end the honest voter must be protected against terrorism, violence or fraud.[20]
In 1884 there was no specific reference to the Negro unless it be found in the statement that the Republican party had gained its strength by "quick and faithful response to the demands of the people for the freedom and equality of all men; for a united nation, assuring the rights of all citizens."[21] The platform of the Democratic party carried a declaration equally as emphatic in that it said, "the preservation of personal rights; the equality of all citizens before the law; the reserved rights of the States and the supremacy of the Federal government within the limits of the constitution will ever form the true basis of our liberties." It further said; "Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is the duty of the government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all citizens, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political."[22]
Giving some impetus to the movement for woman suffrage which the Republicans had by various platforms theretofore encouraged, the Prohibitionists carried in their platform in 1888 the declaration that the right of suffrage rests on no mere circumstance of race, color, sex or nationality and that "where, from any cause, it has been held from citizens who are of suitable age and mentally and morally qualified for the exercise of an intelligent ballot, it should be restored by the people through the legislature of the several States, on such basis as they may deem wise.[23]