tion of how rapidly
public opinion is changed, and with what force it may be brought to
bear upon a given question in a period that is filled with the spirit
of revolutionary excitement. If five years before the most pronounced
anti-slavery man in the country had been told that not only would
slavery be abolished, not only would the slave be transformed into a
citizen, but that the National Government would confer upon him all the
civil rights pertaining to the white man and would stretch forth its
arm to protect him in those rights throughout the limits of the
Republic, it would have seemed to him as the wildest fancy of a
distempered brain. But his had actually come to pass through the
ordinary forms of legislation, and by such a preponderating display
of senatorial and representative strength as had scarcely ever before
controlled a public policy since the foundation of the Government.

It was not, of course, without some misgiving, without a certain
timidity and distrust, that many Republicans were brought to the
support of these measures. They did not object to their inherent and
essential justice and rightfulness, but with instinctive caution they
feared that an attempt to wipe away the prejudices of two centuries in
a single day might lead to a dangerous re-action, and to a consequent
change in the political control of the country. Many who were borne
along in the irresistible current of aggressive reform dreaded all the
more the effect of the votes which the moral and political pressure of
their constituents compelled them to give. In the Constitutional
amendment abolishing slavery they went forward without distrust, with
complete approbation of conscience, with undoubting belief in the
expediency of the act. They knew that the great mass of the North was
heartily opposed to slavery: they knew that its abolition was not
merely right but was destined to be popular. It affected moreover only
that great section of country which had engaged in the crime of
rebellion; and if it were viewed only as a punishment of those who had
sought the destruction of the Government, they felt more than justified
in inflicting it.

But the legislation now accomplished was of a different type. In no
State of the North had there ever been social equality between the
negro and the white man. It had been most nearly approached in New
England, but still there were points of prejudice which time had not
effaced nor custom chang