rier that had stood between the people of
the stricken section and political extinction was about to be removed by
the exit of Andrew Johnson from the White House. In his place a man
of blood and iron--for such was the estimate at that time placed upon
Grant--had been elected President. The Republicans in Congress, checked
for a time by Johnson, were at length to have entire sway under Thaddeus
Stevens. Reconstruction was to be thorough and merciless. To meet these
conditions was the first requirement of the Courier-Journal, a newspaper
conducted by outlawed rebels and published on the sectional border line.
The task was not an easy one.

There is never a cause so weak that it does not stir into ill-timed
activity some wild, unpractical zealots who imagine it strong. There
is never a cause so just but that the malevolent and the mercenary will
seek to trade upon it. The South was helpless; the one thing needful was
to get it on its feet, and though the bravest and the wisest saw this
plainly enough there came to the front--particularly in Kentucky--a
small but noisy body of politicians who had only worked themselves
into a state of war when it was too late, and who with more or less of
aggression, insisted that "the states lately in rebellion" still had
rights, which they were able to maintain and which the North could be
forced to respect.

I was of a different opinion. It seemed to me that whatever of right
might exist the South was at the mercy of the North; that the radical
party led by Stevens and Wade dominated the North and could dictate its
own terms; and that the shortest way round lay in that course which was
best calculated to disarm radicalism by an intelligent appeal to the
business interests and conservative elements of Northern society,
supported by a domestic policy of justice alike to whites and blacks.

Though the institution of African slavery was gone the negro continued
the subject of savage contention. I urged that he be taken out of the
arena of agitation, and my way of taking him out was to concede him his
legal and civil rights. The lately ratified Constitutional Amendments,
I contended, were the real Treaty of Peace between the North and South.
The recognition of these Amendments in good faith by the white people of
the South was indispensable to that perfect peace which was desired
by the best people of both sections. The political emancipation of the
blacks was essential to the moral emanci