onderance of the negroes over the whites. The specter of "negro
domination" haunted the Southern imagination long after it had become an
impossibility. Then it was used as a bogy by small politicians. But the
only serious attempt at national legislation for the South has been of a
wholly different character. It was the plan of Senator Blair of New
Hampshire, long urged upon Congress, and sometimes with good hope of
success, for national assistance to local education, on the basis of
existing illiteracy, for a term of ten years, to a total amount of
$100,000,000. That is the only kind of special legislation for the South
that has had any chance of enactment for almost thirty years.

Through the twelve years of political reconstruction, 1865-77, the
Southern people were gradually adapting themselves to the new industrial
and social conditions. Then the body of the whites, finding themselves
fully restored to political mastery, grasped the entire situation with
new clearness and vigor. They thrust the freedmen not only out of
legislative majorities and the State offices, but out of all and any
effective exercise of the suffrage. The means were various, consisting
largely of indirect and technical hindrances, "tissue-paper ballots" and
the like. The intelligent class massed against the ignorant found no
serious difficulty in having their own way at all points. A considerable
number of negroes still voted, and had their votes counted, but their
party was always somehow put in the minority; almost all offices passed
out of their hands; their representatives speedily disappeared from
Congress, and before long from the Legislatures. Negro suffrage was
almost nullified, and that, too, before the legislation of the last
decade.

But, in asserting their complete political superiority, the whites also
recognized a large responsibility for the race they controlled. A degree
of civil rights was secured to them, short of a perfect equality with
the whites, but far beyond the status intended by the "black codes" of
1865-6. The fundamental rights, of liberty to dispose of their labor and
earnings in their own way, and protection of person and property by the
law and the courts, were substantially secured. And, very notably, the
common school education of blacks as well as whites was undertaken with
fidelity, energy and new success. This great and vital advance,
inaugurated by the Southern Republican governments, was accepted and
carrie