pation of the whites. With the
disappearance of the negro question as cause of agitation, I argued,
radicalism of the intense, proscriptive sort would die out; the
liberty-loving, patriotic people of the North would assert themselves;
and, this one obstacle to a better understanding removed, the
restoration of Constitutional Government would follow, being a matter of
momentous concern to the body of the people both North and South.

Such a policy of conciliation suited the Southern extremists as little
as it suited the Northern extremists. It took from the politicians their
best card. South no less than North, "the bloody shirt" was trumps. It
could always be played. It was easy to play it and it never failed
to catch the unthinking and to arouse the excitable. What cared the
perennial candidate so he got votes enough? What cared the professional
agitator so his appeals to passion brought him his audience?

It is a fact that until Lamar delivered his eulogy on Sumner not a
Southern man of prominence used language calculated to placate the
North, and between Lamar and Grady there was an interval of fifteen
years. There was not a Democratic press worthy the name either North or
South. During those evil days the Courier-Journal stood alone, having
no party or organized following. At length it was joined on the Northern
side by Greeley. Then Schurz raised his mighty voice. Then came the
great liberal movement of 1871-72, with its brilliant but ill-starred
campaign and its tragic finale; and then there set in what, for a
season, seemed the deluge.

But the cause of Constitutional Government was not dead. It had been
merely dormant. Champions began to appear in unexpected quarters. New
men spoke up, North and South. In spite of the Republican landslide of
1872, in 1874 the Democrats swept the Empire State. They carried the
popular branch of Congress by an overwhelming majority. In the Senate
they had a respectable minority, with Thurman and Bayard to lead it. In
the House Randall and Kerr and Cox, Lamar, Beck and Knott were about
to be reenforced by Hill and Tucker and Mills and Gibson. The logic of
events was at length subduing the rodomontade of soap-box oratory.
Empty rant was to yield to reason. For all its mischances and melancholy
ending the Greeley campaign had shortened the distance across the bloody
chasm.

Chapter the Eighth

Feminism and Woman Suffrage--The Adventures in Politics and Society--A