ng by politics what they lost by the
sword, is the secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be
extinguished before national ideas and objects can take full possession
of the Southern mind. There is but one safe and constitutional way to
banish that mischievous hope from the South, and that is by lifting the
laborer beyond the unfriendly political designs of his former master.
Give the negro the elective franchise, and you at once destroy the
purely sectional policy, and wheel the Southern States into line with
national interests and national objects. The last and shrewdest turn
of Southern politics is a recognition of the necessity of getting into
Congress immediately, and at any price. The South will comply with
any conditions but suffrage for the negro. It will swallow all the
unconstitutional test oaths, repeal all the ordinances of Secession,
repudiate the Rebel debt, promise to pay the debt incurred in conquering
its people, pass all the constitutional amendments, if only it can have
the negro left under its political control. The proposition is as modest
as that made on the mountain: "All these things will I give unto thee if
thou wilt fall down and worship me."

But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? The
answer plainly is, they see in this policy the only hope of saving
something of their old sectional peculiarities and power. Once
firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern Democrats
re-established, their States restored to their former position inside
the Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government
entirely too busy with other important matters to pay much attention
to the local affairs of the Southern States. Under the potent shield of
State Rights, the game would be in their own hands. Does any sane man
doubt for a moment that the men who followed Jefferson Davis through the
late terrible Rebellion, often marching barefooted and hungry, naked and
penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would plunge
this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their
coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the
negroes? Plainly enough, the peace not less than the prosperity of this
country is involved in the great measure of impartial suffrage. King
Cotton is deposed, but only deposed, and is ready to-day to reassert all
his ancient pretensions upon the first favorable opportunity. Foreign
co