Reconstruction in the South for the perpetuation of party supremacy? Such influence would probably have been beyond the power even of Lincoln's greatness." The party which had devoted itself
to the truly noble cause of emancipa tion, as soon as the War was over gradually fell under the sway of a fanatical extreme left, so to speak. The North was not as a whole in favor of negro enfranchisement, as Mr. Mathews shows in his scholarly sketch of the history of the Fifteenth Amendment. In Pennsylvania the proposal was bitterly assailed. The psychology of the process
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and trivial pretexts, merely because they might be considered remotely in sympathy with the lost cause. In
Louisiana and others of the conquered states this disfranchisement led to a situation gloomy indeed, and a long period of sordid strife‘ was to come before tranquility could ensue. The late Professor Ficklen has described that turmoil in Louisiana with a happy combination of the dispassionateness of the trustworthy historian with the vividness of the writer who gives to his subject a living reality. Maryland,
idea of negro enfranchisement as a party
which had not joined the Confederacy, was more fortunate. There, the radi cals failed to triumph, and the Demo
policy would afiord an interesting sub
cratic party was able to control the
ject for investigation.
Mr. Mathews
internal policies that sooner effected
has described the coalition which brought
the “self-reconstruction” of this state than of others.
which resulted in the adoption of the
about
the
passage
of the
Fifteenth
Amendment. This coalition united three groups, nationalists, humanitarians and politicians, neither of which succeeded in getting exactly what it desired. It would probably be easy to show that the humanitarians were the strongest factor
in the coalition and that the party was practically subjected to their dictation, even if they did not get all that they wanted.
Supported by humanitarian prejudices propagated by the zeal of dangerously one-sided agitators, the political leaders were able to carry out an extreme policy unfavorable to moderation and concilia
tion. The most substantial element of Southern citizenship which had survived the War and was fittest to rebuild the conquered states on their ruins was completely outlawed to the immeasur able detriment of the South. As Mr. Myers says, it may have been right to deprive men disloyal to the Union of their citizenship, but it was not right to disfranchise the leading men of the South wholesale, on the most shadowy
The reconstruction policy failed to
attain one of its main objects—the enfranchisement of the negro. Mr. Mathews intimates that the Fifteenth Amendment may already be in process
of repeal, so far as derive its sanction ment. The work of pation, which in a
it may be said to from public senti completing emanci sense may still be
before us, lies not in the direction of wholesale enfranchisement, but, as Mr.
Murphy eloquently maintains, in that of substituting measures of develop ment for those of repression. The aim should be not to allow the negro to vote
regardless of his political capacity, but to lift him to a level which will make it
possible to partake of the fruits of our modern democratic dispensation. If we could only have chosen this as the point of departure at the close of the War, a
more enlightened and moderate humani tarianism might have sooner rehabili tated our Southern institutions, and have saved us years of inglorious turmoil and failure.
