ing very beautiful about a love of freedom wholly
independent of experience and deriving solely from the just instinct of
the human soul as to what is its due. And if, as some Southerners said,
the Negro understood by freedom mainly that he need not work, there was
a truth behind his idea, for the right to be idle if and when you choose
without reason given or permission sought is really what makes the
essential difference between freedom and slavery. But it is quite
another thing when we come to a complex national and historical product
like American citizenship. Of all that great European past, without the
memory of which the word "Republic" has no meaning, the Negro knew
nothing: with it he had no link. A barbaric version of the more barbaric
parts of the Bible supplied him with his only record of human society.

Yet Negro Suffrage, though a monstrous anomaly, might have done
comparatively little practical mischief if the Negro and his white
neighbour had been left alone to find their respective levels. The Negro
might have found a certain picturesque novelty in the amusement of
voting; the white American might have continued to control the practical
operation of Government. But it was no part of the policy of those now
in power at Washington to leave either black or white alone. "Loyal"
Governments were to be formed in the South; and to this end political
adventurers from the North--"carpet-baggers," as they were called--went
down into the conquered South to organize the Negro vote. A certain
number of disreputable Southerners, known as "scallywags," eagerly took
a hand in the game for the sake of the spoils. So of course did the
smarter and more ambitious of the freedmen. And under the control of
this ill-omened trinity of Carpet-Bagger, Scallywag, and Negro
adventurer grew up a series of Governments the like of which the sun has
hardly looked upon before or since.

The Negro is hardly to be blamed for his share in the ghastly business.
The whole machinery of politics was new to him, new and delightful as a
toy, new and even more delightful as a means of personal enrichment.
That it had or was intended to have any other purpose probably hardly
crossed his mind. His point of view--a very natural one, after all--was
well expressed by the aged freedman who was found chuckling over a pile
of dollar bills, the reward of some corrupt vote, and, when questioned,
observed: "Wal, it's de fifth time I's been bo't and sold, b