ve met the situation was afforded
by no less a man than Robert E. Lee, about whose unselfishness and
standard of conduct as a gentleman there could be no question. One day
in Richmond a Negro from the street, intent on asserting his rights,
entered a representative church, pushed his way to the communion altar
and knelt. The congregation paused, and all fully realized the factors
that entered into the situation. Then General Lee rose and knelt beside
the Negro; the congregation did likewise, and the tension was over.
Furthermore, every one went home spiritually uplifted.

Could the handling of this incident have been multipled a thousand
times--could men have realized that mere accidents are fleeting but
that principles are eternal--both races would have been spared years
of agony, and our Southland would be a far different place to-day. The
Negro was at the heart of the problem, but to that problem the South
undoubtedly held the key. Of course the cry of "social equality" might
have been raised; _anything_ might have been said to keep the right
thing from being done. In this instance, as in many others, the final
question was not what somebody else did, but how one himself could act
most nobly.

Unfortunately Lee's method of approach was not to prevail. Passion and
prejudice and demagoguery were to have their day, and conservative and
broadly patriotic men were to be made to follow leaders whom they could
not possibly approve. Sixty years afterwards we still suffer from the
KuKlux solution of the problem.

2. _Meeting the Problem_

The story of reconstruction has been many times told, and it is not
our intention to tell that story again. We must content ourselves by
touching upon some of the salient points in the discussion.

Even before the close of the war the National Government had undertaken
to handle officially the thousands of Negroes who had crowded to the
Federal lines and not less than a million of whom were in the spring of
1865 dependent upon the National Government for support. The Bureau of
Refugee Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, created in connection with the
War Department by an act of March 3, 1865, was to remain in existence
throughout the war and for one year thereafter. Its powers were enlarged
July 16, 1866, and its chief work did not end until January 1, 1869, its
educational work continuing for a year and a half longer. The Freedmen's
Bureau was to have "the supervision and management of all