ing had for most of their lives no property rights of
their own, not even the ownership of their own souls and bodies. Yet
most of the plunder seems to have gone into the pockets of knaves of the
superior race. There was a degree of extravagance, waste and corruption,
varying greatly with localities and times, but sufficient to leave a
permanent discredit on the Southern Republican governments as a class.
To judge accurately of the merits and demerits of these governments is
perhaps as difficult a task as historian ever undertook. So fierce is
the passion which invests these events in the memory of the present
generation, that it is almost hopeless to sift and adjudicate the sober
facts. Time has softened much; even the Civil War begins to stand forth
in some firmness of outline and clarity of atmosphere. But when we come
to reconstruction--grave historians grow almost hysterical, romancers
pass the bounds of possibilities, and even official figures contradict
one another with sublime effrontery.

Yet this very passion of remembrance, which in one way obscures, in
another way illuminates the historical situation. The grievance most
profoundly felt in the reconstruction period was not unwise laws nor
waste of public money nor oppressive taxes. It was the consciousness by
the master class of political subjection to the servile class. It was
the spectacle of rude blacks, yesterday picking cotton or driving mules,
sitting in the legislators' seats and executive offices of Richmond and
Columbia, holding places of power among the people of Lee and Calhoun.
Fancy the people of Massachusetts, were the state-house on Beacon hill
suddenly occupied by Italian, Polish and Russian laborers,--placed and
kept there by a foreign conqueror. Add to the comparison the prouder
height of the slaveholder, and the lower depth of his serf. Put this as
the case of a people high-strung and sensitive, still fresh from the
passion of war, still smarting from defeat. They had fought to
exhaustion, and their banner had fallen without disgrace. Now the
victors who had won by superiority of force had placed their late
bondmen as their rulers. The offices from which their own captains and
chiefs were shut out were filled by plantation field-hands.

It was not likely that the first attitude of scornful passivity would
long continue, and it did not. The warnings vainly uttered
beforehand,--that the natural leaders would surely lead, and had best be
won