ion of Congress, no
purpose to abide by the Constitutional Amendment in good faith. A
majority of the white people of the South adopted rather the creed of
General Blair, whom they had supported for Vice-President, and regarded
themselves justified in opposing, repudiating, and if possible
destroying, the governments that had grown up under the protection of
the Reconstruction Laws. The re-admission of their States to
representation was taken by them only as the beginning of the war in
which they would more freely wage conflict against that which was
distasteful and, as they claimed, oppressive. It is not to be denied
that they had the inherent right, inside of Constitutional limitations,
to repeal the laws of their States, and even to change the Constitution
itself, if they should do it by prescribed methods and by honest
majorities, and should not, in the process, disturb the fundamental
conditions upon which the General Government had assented to their
re-admission to the right of representation in Congress. It was not,
however, the purpose of the Southern Democrats to be fettered and
embarrassed by any such exemplary restraints. By means lawful or
unlawful they determined to uproot and overthrow the State governments
that had been established in a spirit of loyalty to the Union. They
were resolved that the negro should not be a political power in their
local governments; that he should not, so far as their interposition
could prevent it, exert any influence over elections, either State or
national; and that his suffrage, if permitted to exist at all, should
be only in the innocent form of a minority.

Seeing this determination, the National Government interposed its
strong arm, and a detail of soldiers at the principal points throughout
the South gave a certain protection to those whose rights were
otherwise in danger of being utterly trodden down. It certainly has
never been proved in a single instance that a legal voter in any
Southern State was deprived of his right of suffrage by the presence
of United-States troops in those states; but the issue was at once made
by the Democratic party against the administration of President Grant,
that free elections were impossible in the Southern states unless
soldiers of the Regular Army were excluded; that their simple presence
was a form of coercion absolutely inconsistent with Republican
government. Many of them, as they now declared, had been willing to
accept