the
South in 1877, the natural and necessary inference to be drawn is that
prior to that time those States were subjected to some other kind of
rule, presumably that of foreigners and strangers, an inference which
is wholly at variance with the truth. Another inference to be drawn is
that those States had enjoyed home rule until the same was
revolutionized or set aside by the Reconstruction Acts of Congress and
that it was finally restored in 1877. If this is the inference which
the writer meant to have the reader make, it is conclusive evidence of
the fact that he was unpardonably and inexcusably ignorant of the
subject matter about which he wrote. As that term is usually and
generally understood, there never was a time when those States did not
have home rule, unless we except the brief period when they were under
military control, and even then the military commanders utilized home
material in making appointments to office. Since the officers,
however, were not elected by the people, it may be plausibly claimed
that they did not have home rule. But the State governments that were
organized and brought into existence under the Reconstruction Acts of
Congress were the first and only governments that were genuinely
republican in form. The form of government which existed in
ante-bellum days was that of an aristocracy. That which has existed
since what Mr. Rhodes is pleased to term the restoration of home rule
is simply that of a local despotic oligarchy. The former _was_ not,
and the present _is_ not, based upon the will and choice of the
masses; but the former was by far the better of the two, for whatever
may be truthfully said in condemnation and in derogation of the
southern aristocracy of ante-bellum days, it can not be denied that
they represented the wealth, the intelligence, the decency and the
respectability of their respective States. While the State governments
that were dominated by the aristocrats were not based upon the will of
the people, as a whole, yet from an administrative point of view they
were not necessarily bad. Such can not be said of those who are now
the representatives of what Mr. Rhodes is pleased to term home rule.

On page 171 of his seventh volume, Mr. Rhodes says: "Some Southern men
at first acted with the Republican party, but they gradually slipped
away from it as the color line was drawn and reckless and corrupt
financial legislation inaugurated." That thousands of white men in the
S