crats dominating the
country and State governments. These Negroes gave the South its
improved judicial system and did their work so well in framing some of
the constitutions that many of them with the exception of the clauses
antagonistic to the Negro remained about as they were for many years.
Although the Democrats got control of the State in 1877, the
constitution of South Carolina of 1868 was not changed materially
until 1893.

The Negro as a factor in reconstruction, moreover, instituted
education at the expense of the public. Through the establishment of
public schools with well equipped buildings and prepared teachers they
removed from that system the stigma formerly attached to persons[13]
educating their children at public expense. They, therefore, made of
education a foundation upon which real democracy must build. It is
only short sightedness on the part of writers to infer that because
the Negro was in a few years thereafter deprived of the ballot that
the good work which was done during the years that they were permitted
to participate in the affairs of these States could be so easily
overthrown, especially so when this progressive part of the program of
the reconstructed governments which the restored whites at first
abandoned has later been taken up and carried out.

Although weakened by the reaction of the North against the methods
employed by politicians in maintaining the reconstructed governments
at the South, which moved President Hayes to withdraw the troops from
that area, the Negroes were still of some concern to the Republicans.
To retain their support the Republicans often spoke of foisting upon
the South the Force Bill to guarantee fair elections but rather
abandoned the Negro to the fate of working out his own salvation with
his oppressors. In all of the campaigns up to 1888 there was the usual
waving of the "bloody shirt" to array the Negro against the South and
of urging the Negro to vote the Republican ticket to pay the debt he
owed the party for his freedom, hypocritically threatening also to
undo many of the things which had been done to the Negro since
Reconstruction. There was no sincerity in these vote-getting
declarations, however, and the Negro in the South remained politically
doomed.

Nothing will better bring out this treatment of the Negro by the
Republican party than a study of the consideration given the race in
the various platforms of that party following the Civil war. T