fter imposed upon any officer.

Near the close of the convention I asked leave to present a petition
from 250 colored property owners of the city of Charleston, who asked
that the right of suffrage be extended to them. This, I suppose, was
the first petition of the kind ever offered in the slave states. A
member of the convention immediately moved that the petition be
returned to me and not received by the convention. Mr. Orr said that
the petition was respectful in form and ought to be received. He
moved that it be laid on the table. Another delegate moved that

NO MENTION

of the reception of the petition be made in the journal. I then rose
to speak upon the last of these motions, but the president of the
convention entertained a motion to adjourn, and the convention did so.

The convention made a constitution which was not, however, submitted
to the people for their approval. Under it a governor and legislature
were elected.

THE BLACK CODE

was ratified by the legislature, and many preposterous laws relating
to the Negroes were passed. It was evident that the freedman was to be
reduced to a condition worse than slavery--he was to be made a serf,
attached to the land, and to be under all the disabilities of slavery
without having the protection of the property interest of the owner.
CONGRESS took charge of the reconstruction, and the new government of
South Carolina fell to pieces, after a brief and inglorious existence.

Although I was the first "carpet bagger," I did not pursue the
occupation. I never held office again in the state, although I
continued to live there for sixteen years, and taking part in politics
as the editor of the Beaufort _Republican_ and the Columbia
_Union-Herald_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This account was taken from James G. Thompson's Papers by his
daughter, Caroline B. Stephen, of Washington, D.C. Special
Correspondence of the _New York Tribune_.

BOOK REVIEWS

_The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1865-1902._ By RICHARD L.
MORTON, Ph.D., Phelps Stokes Fellow in the University of
Virginia, 1917-1918. Charlottesville, Virginia, 1919. Pp. 199.
Price, $1.50.

This is the fourth number of a series of studies in the race problem
promoted by the Phelps Stokes Fund with a view to interesting a larger
number of southern white scholars in this field. The seriousness of
the problem during recent years has driven home the thought that
without scientific investiga