h, would have restored the whites to full
control, with the negroes at their mercy. The Congress, however,
intervened, and the ex-Confederate States were placed under military law,
and only admitted to recognition as States upon conditions which gave the
negro equal rights with his white fellow-citizens--and indeed superior
rights to many of them, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States excluding from office all persons who, having taken an
oath as public officers to support the Constitution afterward joined the
Confederacy. For opposing these measures of Congress President Johnson
was impeached, and escaped conviction by one vote.

* * *

The Southern whites continued to struggle for white supremacy. The
conflict continued throughout Johnson's term as President, and even the
severe military measures adopted under power from Congress by General
Grant, only suppressed organized violence in its more rampant form. It
was impossible to imprison a commonwealth or to place bayonets at every
threshold, and while the negro might be upheld in his right of suffrage,
Federal protection could not supply him with work and bread. The
intellect and the property of the South were on the side of the whites,
and the blacks began to find that their choice was between submission or
extinction.

In the North, even among Republicans, a feeling grew that the
ex-Confederates had suffered enough, while it was impossible for an
honest man to have any other sentiment than contempt for the political
vultures who had descended on the wasted South. This feeling gave
strength to the Liberal Republican movement in 1872, and arrayed
Democrats--and not a few of the old anti-slavery leaders--in support of
Horace Greeley for President.

The insanity and death of Mr. Greeley cast a gloom over the election for
victors as well as vanquished. Mr. Greeley's mind was weakened by
domestic affliction, and by the desertion of _Tribune_ readers, and when
crushing defeat at the polls gave the _coup-de-grace_ to his political
prospects, his once vigorous intellect yielded under the strain. Like a
dying gladiator, mortally wounded, but with courage unquenched, he seized
once more the editorial blade with which he had dealt so many powerful
blows in the past for justice and for truth; but nature was not equal to
the task, and the weapon fell from his nerveless grasp. His last words
were: "The count