ey accommodated themselves to the
legitimate results of the War, and that there were certain things which
the victorious Union government was bound to insist upon, not in a
spirit of vindictiveness, but as a simple matter of honor and
duty--instead of this President Johnson told them that their instant
restoration to their old status in the Union, that is, to complete
self-government and to participation in the National Government, on
equal terms with the other States, had become their indefeasible
constitutional right as soon as the insurgents laid down their arms and
went through the form of taking an oath of allegiance, and that those
who refused to recognize the immediate validity of that right were no
better than traitors and public enemies. Nothing could have been more
natural, under such circumstances, than that the master class in the
South should have seen a chance to establish something like
semi-slavery, and that, pressed by their economic perplexities, they
should have eagerly grasped at that chance. No wonder that what should
have been as gentle as possible a transition from one social state into
another degenerated into an angry political brawl, which grew more and
more furious as it went on. No wonder, finally, that when at last the
Congressional reconstruction policy, which at first might have been
quietly submitted to as something that might have been worse, and that
could not be averted, came at last in the midst of that brawl, it was
resented in the South as an act of diabolical malice and tyrannical
oppression not to be endured. And the worst outcome of all was, that
many white people of the South who had at first cherished a kindly
feeling for the negroes on account of their "fidelity" during the War,
now fell to hating the negroes as the cause of all their woes; that, on
the other hand, the negroes, after all their troubles, raised to a
position of power, now were tempted to a reckless use of that power; and
that a selfish partizan spirit growing up among the Republican majority,
instead of endeavoring to curb that tendency, encouraged, or, at least,
tolerated it for party advantage.

I have to confess that I took a more hopeful view of the matter at the
time, for I did not foresee the mischievous part which selfish partizan
spirit would play in that precarious situation. I trusted that the
statesmen of the Republican party would prove clear-sighted enough to
perceive in time the danger of excesses