pages I have given an unfair idea of
his character.

In the meantime far more important work was being done in the
establishment of Negro rule in the South. State after State was
"reconstructed" under the terms of the Act which had been passed over
the President's veto. In every case as many white men as possible were
disfranchised on one pretext or another as "disloyal." In every case the
whole Negro population was enfranchised. Throughout practically the
whole area of what had been the Confederate States the position of the
races was reversed.

So far, in discussing the Slavery Question and all the issues which
arose out of it, I have left one factor out of account--the attitude of
the slaves themselves. I have done so deliberately because up to the
point which we have now reached that attitude had no effect on history.
The slaves had no share in the Abolition movement or in the formation of
the Republican Party. Even from John Brown's Raid they held aloof. The
President's proclamation which freed them, the Acts of Congress which
now gave them supreme power throughout the South, were not of their
making or inspiration. In politics the negro was still an unknown
factor.

There can be little doubt that under Slavery the relations of the two
races were for the most part kindly and free from rancour, that the
master was generally humane and the slave faithful. Had it not been so,
indeed, the effect of the transfer of power to the freedmen must have
been much more horrible than it actually was. On the other hand, it is
certain that when some Southern apologists said that the slaves did not
want their freedom they were wrong. Dr. Booker Washington, himself a
slave till his sixth or seventh year, has given us a picture of the
vague but very real longing which was at the back of their minds which
bears the stamp of truth. It is confirmed by their strange and
picturesque hymnology, in which the passionate desire to be "free,"
though generally apparently invoked in connection with a future life, is
none the less indicative of their temper, and in their preoccupation
with those parts of the Old Testament--the history of the Exodus, for
instance--which appeared applicable to their own condition. Yet it is
clear that they had but the vaguest idea of what "freedom" implied. Of
what "citizenship" implied they had, of course, no idea at all.

It is very far from my purpose to write contemptuously of the Negroes.
There is someth