was a mistake to bestow the high powers and privileges
of a wholly unrestricted ballot--a ballot which is the symbol of
intelligent self-government--upon the Negro. Other people, of whom I am
one, believe that it was a necessary concomitant of the revolution; it
was itself a revolution, not a growth, and like every other revolution
it has had its fearful reaction. Revolutions, indeed, change names, but
they do not at once change human relationships. Mankind is reconstructed
not by proclamations, or legislation, or military occupation, but by
time, growth, education, religion, thought. At that time, then, the
nation drove down the stakes of its idealism in government far beyond
the point it was able to reach in the humdrum activities of everyday
existence. A reaction was inevitable; it was inevitable and perfectly
natural that there should be a widespread questioning as to whether
all Negroes, or indeed any Negroes, should properly be admitted to full
political fellowship. That questioning continues to this day.

Now, the essential principle established by the Fifteenth Amendment to
the Constitution was not that all Negroes should necessarily be given an
unrestricted access to the ballot; but that the right to vote should not
be denied or abridged 'on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude.' This amendment wiped out the color-line in politics so
far as any written law could possibly do it.

Let me here express my profound conviction that the principle of
political equality then laid down is a sound, valid, and absolutely
essential principle in any free government; that restrictions upon the
ballot, when necessary, should be made to apply equally to white and
colored citizens; and that the Fifteenth Amendment ought not to be,
and cannot be repealed. Moreover, I am convinced that the principle of
political equality is more firmly established to-day in this country
than it was forty years ago, when it had only Northern bayonets behind
it. For now, however short the practice falls of reaching the legal
standard, the principle is woven into the warp and woof of Southern life
and Southern legislation. Many Southern white leaders of thought are
to-day CONVINCED, not FORCED believers in the principle; and that is a
great omen.

Limitations have come about, it is true, and were to be expected as
the back-currents of the revolution. Laws providing for educational
and property qualifications as a prerequisite