period of their new
freedom in orderly government and in civilization. That was the way their
education in citizenship and character building began and that was the way
it proceeded until the year 1876.

In that year the two irreconcilable governments grappled in a final
struggle at the polls for mastery and possession of that section. When the
smoke of battle cleared over South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the
Southern forces of re-action were in complete possession of those states,
and the solid South had become an accomplished fact. Nothing stood now
between the blacks and their ancient enemy. They were again at the mercy
of the old master class, who returned promptly to the execution of their
interrupted program of inequality and injustice. As the whites could not
now reestablish constitutionally their old slave system, or directly their
new serf system they proceeded to do the next best thing, that is to
construct a caste system based on race and color. Such a system, once
firmly established, would fix the status of the blacks as a permanently
inferior caste, and to that extent would render nugatory the three great
amendments to the constitution. For members of an inferior caste would by
the force of circumstances, law, or no law, be deprived of certain rights
civil and political enjoyed by members of the superior caste. Citizenship
of the one caste would not mean the same thing as citizenship of the
other. The lower caste could not possibly possess the same
rights--constitution or no constitution--which the upper caste possessed.
Inequality became thus the chief corner stone of the new Southern edifice.
Under this society there grew up two moral standards and two legal
standards for the government of the races. For example what under such a
system is bad for a black man to do to a member of the white race might
not be regarded as bad at all if done by a white man to a member of the
black race. The cruel and iniquitous sex relations of the races in the
South has grown out of this caste system. Under it we have the double
moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that
section with a vengeance. A white man cannot with impunity seduce another
white man's daughter or wife in the South. But were he to seduce a colored
man's daughter or wife the case would be wholly different. No bastardy
process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white
sister under like circumstances, a