ho protested against disfranchisement
in the South turned to the Republican party for relief, asking for
action by the political branches of the federal government as the
Supreme Court had suggested. The Republicans responded in their platform
of 1908 by condemning all devices designed to deprive any one of the
ballot for reasons of color alone; they demanded the enforcement in
letter and spirit of the fourteenth as well as all other amendments.
Though victorious in the election, the Republicans refrained from
reopening the ancient contest; they made no attempt to reduce Southern
representation in the House. Southern leaders, while protesting against
the declarations of their opponents, were able to view them as idle
threats in no way endangering the security of the measures by which
political reconstruction had been undone.

=The Solid South.=--Out of the thirty-year conflict against "carpet-bag
rule" there emerged what was long known as the "solid South"--a South
that, except occasionally in the border states, never gave an electoral
vote to a Republican candidate for President. Before the Civil War, the
Southern people had been divided on political questions. Take, for
example, the election of 1860. In all the fifteen slave states the
variety of opinion was marked. In nine of them--Delaware, Virginia,
Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, and
Arkansas--the combined vote against the representative of the extreme
Southern point of view, Breckinridge, constituted a safe majority. In
each of the six states which were carried by Breckinridge, there was a
large and powerful minority. In North Carolina Breckinridge's majority
over Bell and Douglas was only 849 votes. Equally astounding to those
who imagine the South united in defense of extreme views in 1860 was the
vote for Bell, the Unionist candidate, who stood firmly for the
Constitution and silence on slavery. In every Southern state Bell's vote
was large. In Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee it was greater
than that received by Breckinridge; in Georgia, it was 42,000 against
51,000; in Louisiana, 20,000 against 22,000; in Mississippi, 25,000
against 40,000.

The effect of the Civil War upon these divisions was immediate and
decisive, save in the border states where thousands of men continued to
adhere to the cause of Union. In the Confederacy itself nearly all
dissent was silenced by war. Men who had been bitter opponents joined
hand