point of view. The Negro has no
political rights which the white man should respect and unless things
are in conformity with the white man's prejudice they are wrong.

No one would gainsay that the enfranchisement of all ex-slaves was a
mistake. Oliver P. Morton, and Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, were
to some extent right in their criticism of such a policy. It would
have been much better to have followed Abraham Lincoln's plan of
enfranchising those Negroes who were owners of property or able to
read and write and those white men who had not taken any part in the
Rebellion. While it should not have been expected that ex-slaves could
administer the affairs of the country it could not, on the other hand,
have been imagined that their masters who had begrudgingly abandoned
their title to men as property would in a few years deal with them as
one should with human beings. As a matter of fact the black codes
which the Southern States enacted immediately after the war show the
inability of the aristocratic southerners to deal humanely with a
subject people. If, therefore, Abraham Lincoln's policy, of gradually
recruiting voters from such blacks as gave evidence of wealth and
education and from such whites as manifested a disposition to do the
right thing by the country and by the freedmen had been followed, the
mistakes of the Reconstruction would have been avoided.

* * * * *

_The Negro Trail Blazers of California._ By DELILAH L. BEASLEY,
Los Angeles, California, 1919. Pp. 317.

This is, according to the author, a compilation of records from the
California Archives in the Bancroft Library at the University of
California and from the diaries, papers and conversations of pioneers
in the State of California. It includes also a record of present-day
Negroes in that State. The book is illustrated with portraits
exhibiting the life of the people past and present. The work is
divided into three parts, the first being historical, the second
biographical, and the third an account of the present-day Negro.

Taking up the historical task, the author accounts for the discovery
of California and mentions the important roles played by Estevanecito
and the Negro priest accompanying the explorers. She then discusses
the rule of Spain in California, the Bear Flag Party, the landing of
Commodore John D. Sloate, the admission of California to the Union,
the Pony Express, the right of testimo