ly road to representation in Congress for their
States was through submission to the conditions imposed by the Acts
of Reconstruction,--conditions far more exacting than those which had
been required by the preceding Congress and which they had so unwisely
refused to accept.

The assignments of Army officers to the Southern districts were made
early in the spring of 1867. From that time onward it was hoped that
the preservation of order would be secured in the South, and that the
rights of all classes would be adequately protected. But
notwithstanding the anticipation of this desirable result, there
was throughout the summer and autumn of 1867 a feeling of great
anxiety concerning the condition of the Southern States,--a constant
apprehension that some outbreak similar to that in New Orleans the
preceding year might lead to deplorable consequences, among the least
of which would be the postponement of the organization of State
governments. The cause of this solicitude among Northern people was
the novel experiment in the South of allowing loyal men regardless of
race or color to share in the suffrage and to participate in the
administration of the Government. Under any less authoritative mandate
than that which is conveyed in a military order with the requisite
force behind it, the Southern communities would never have accepted
or submitted to the conditions thus imposed. But the sympathy which
their condition under other circumstances might have evoked in the
North, was stifled by the pertinent consideration that they had
refused other forms of Reconstruction, and had wilfully drawn upon
themselves all that was unwelcome in the one now about to be enforced.
It was to be noted moreover that the feature which was most unwelcome
--impartial suffrage--was the one especially founded upon justice,
abstract as well as practical.

Conventions were held successively in all the States, the elections
being conducted in good order, while every man entitled to vote was
fully secured in his suffrage. The conventions were duly assembled,
constitutions formed, submitted in due time, and approved by popular
vote. State governments were promptly organized under these organic
laws, Legislatures were elected, and the Fourteenth Amendment ratified
in each of the States with as hearty a unanimity as in the preceding
winter it has been rejected by the same communities. The proceedings
were approximately uniform in all the States, a