haracter as
brought shame upon the Republican party, exposed the negro voters to
unmerited obloquy, and thus wrought for the cause of free government
and equal suffrage in the South incalculable harm. These Southern
State governments proved a source of angry contention inside the
Republican party in the North, and thus brought one more calamity to
the negro, and gave one more advantage to the rebel element of the
South that so persistently sought for his disfranchisement.

The hostility of Southern men to Carpet-bag rule was instinctive and
irrepressible. The failure of the rebellion left its participants
stripped of property, depressed in spirit, angry and unreconciled.
Northern men appearing among them recalled in an offensive manner the
power that had overcome and as they thought humiliated them,--recalled
it before time had made them familiar with the new order of things,
before they could subject themselves to the discipline of adversity,
and gracefully accept the inevitable. Even the most decorous and
considerate behavior on the part of these men would perhaps have failed
to conciliate the Southern population. But while unable to do this,
they could no doubt in due season have secured public confidence if
they had administered the trusts confided to them with an eye single to
the prosperity and happiness of the people over whom by a strange
concurrence of circumstances they were empowered to rule. If these men
had in all cases established as good and trustworthy governments in the
South as they had been reared under in the North, they would have
conferred upon all the reconstructed States a blessing which as
prejudice wore away would have caused their names to be respected and
honored. Their governments were however demoralized by the violent
and murderous course of the clans organized to resist them. In the
play between the two forces,--a government too weak to command respect;
a native population too resentful to yield obedience,--a state of
social disorder and political chaos resulted, which would in advance
have seemed impossible among any people clothed with the right of
self-government, and living under a Republic of vast power and
prestige.

The Republicans lost in many of the Southern States a valuable support
upon which they had counted with confidence. Union men whom no
persecution could break and no blandishments could seduce, were to be
found in the South at the outbreak of the rebellion. Th