lities as forbade their holding office. It is true that in a
certain election under the Reconstruction laws the voter was subjected
to a test-oath, but this condition was imposed under what seemed to be
a fair plea of necessity; for it was applied in the South only after
the entire white population had refused to reconstruct their States on
the basis first freely offered them, with no restriction on white
suffrage, and even before the negro was empowered to vote. Fearing
from this experience that any organization of a State under the
auspices of Republican power might be voted down, Congress resorted to
the expedient of confining the suffrage in the preliminary stage to
shoe who had not rebelled, and who could therefore be firmly trusted
to establish a loyal government.

While the National Government refrained from withholding the elective
franchise from men who had fought to destroy the Union, there is no
doubt that disabilities and exclusions were imposed upon large classes
in certain States of the South. But perhaps even here there have been
exaggeration and misunderstanding, for in some of the reconstructed
States,--notably Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas,--there were no
test-oaths and no exclusion from the right of suffrage by reason of
participation in the rebellion; and yet hostility to the Reconstruction
Acts, and personal wrongs and injuries to the colored men, were quite
as marked in those States as in those where certain classes of citizens
labored under the stigma of exclusion from the ballot. Possibly it
might be said that exclusion, even in one State, was an odious
discrimination which all who had taken part in the rebellion would,
from a feeling of fellowship, resent and resist. But the truth
remains, nevertheless, that in the Southern States in which no
test-oaths were applied disturbance, disorder, and resistance to law
were as frequent and flagrant as in those where suffrage had in some
degree been qualified and restricted.

The original difficulty was the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment
by the South--a difficulty that recurred not only at every subsequent
step of reconstruction, but was even more plainly demonstrated after
reconstruction was nominally complete. If that Amendment had been
accepted by the Southern States as the basis of reconstruction, the
suffrage of the colored man would have followed as a necessity and a
boon to the South. It would have originated in popular demand,