dangerous developments in the Southern States looking to his
re-enslavement in fact, if not in form. The year that followed
the accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency was full of
anxiety and warning to all the lovers of justice, to all who
hoped for 'a more perfect union' of the States. In nearly every
one of the Confederate States the white inhabitants assumed
that they were to be restored to the Union with their State
governments precisely as they were when they seceded in 1861,
and that the organic change created by the Thirteenth Amendment
might be practically set aside by State legislation. In this
belief they exhibited their policy towards the Negro.
Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find in
history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race
than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and
reconstructed State governments. Their membership was composed
wholly of the 'ruling class,' as they termed it, and, in no
small degree, of Confederate officers below the rank of
brigadier-general, who sat in the legislature in the very
uniforms which had distinguished them as enemies of the Union
upon the battlefield. Limited space forbids my transcribing the
black code wherewith they loaded their statute books. In Mr.
Lamar's State the Negroes were forbidden, under very severe
penalties, to keep firearms of any kind; they were apprenticed,
if minors, to labor, preference being given by the statute to
their 'former owners;' grown men and women were compelled to
let their labor by contract, the decision of whose terms was
wholly in the hands of the whites; and those who failed to
contract were to be seized as 'vagrants,' heavily fined, and
their labor sold by the sheriff at public outcry to the highest
bidder. The terms 'master' and 'mistress' continually recur in
the statutes, and the slavery that was thus instituted was a
far more degrading, merciless and mercenary than that which was
blotted out by the Thirteenth Amendment.

"South Carolina, whose moderation and justice are so highly
prized by Governor Hampton, enacted a code still more cruel
than that I have quoted from Mississippi. Firearms were
forbidden to the Negro, and any violation of the statute was
punished by 'fine equal to twice the