ssibility and hope that the exercise of
the ballot will in itself prove educational, and that the Southern white
man and Southern negro will ultimately fare better than if the one is
allowed to permanently disfranchise the other." Something like this,
apparently, whether wise or unwise, was the predominant judgment of the
better class at the North.

With others the argument was simpler. Blaine in his _Twenty Years_ gives
a common sentiment, himself in 1884 still concurring in it: "The North
believed, and believed wisely, that a poor man, an ignorant man, and a
black man, who was thoroughly loyal, was a safer and better voter than a
rich man, an educated man, and a white man, who in his heart was
disloyal to the Union." The _Republican_, on the contrary, expressed the
opinion: "It is better to be governed by ex-rebels than by fools."

The Fourteenth Amendment had been put forward virtually as an
invitation. It was rejected by the South, and the new plan--military
government, to give place to new constitutions with universal
suffrage--was issued as a mandate. It was promptly carried out. In
little more than a twelvemonth, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas had been reconstructed; their State
organizations were provisionally accepted by Congress in June, 1868; and
as their Legislatures at once ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and
secured its adoption, they were fully restored and their senators and
representatives admitted in July. Virginia and Mississippi managed to
stave off final action, hoping to escape the excluding clauses, until
after Grant's election to the Presidency in 1868; and their hopes were
justified when Grant gave his influence successfully with Congress
against the excluding clauses; so that these two States, with belated
Texas, were reorganized in the following year and admitted early in
1870. Georgia had troubles of her own, and a suspension by Congress
from full statehood for half a year; and her final admission, on July
15, 1870, marked definitely the end of the reconstruction process. The
registration of voters in the ten States had shown that in Alabama,
Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the colored voters
were in a majority; in Georgia, the two races were about equal; and in
Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas, one-third or more were
colored. The preponderance of voting power had been given to a people
just out of slavery. The practical w