nguage addressed to the
Negro women; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to
resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with
impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or restore
indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of $1 for every
outburst. The 'agent' referred to in the statute is the
well-known overseer of the cotton region, and the care with
which the lawmaker of Louisiana provided that his delicate ears
and sensitive nerves should not be offended with an oath or an
indecent word from a Negro will be appreciated by all who have
heard the crack of the whip on a southern plantation.

"It is impossible to quote all the hideous provisions of these
statutes under whose operation the Negro would have been
relapsed gradually and surely into actual and admitted slavery.
Kindred legislation was attempted in a large majority of the
Confederate States, and it is not uncharitable or illogical to
assume that the ultimate re-enslavement of the race was the
fixed design of those who framed the law and of those who
attempted to enforce them.

"I am not speculating as to what would have been done or might
have been done in the Southern States if the National
Government had not intervened. I have quoted what actually was
done by legislatures under the control of Southern Democrats,
and I am only recalling history when I say that those outrages
against human nature were upheld by the Democratic party of the
country. All Democrats whose articles I am reviewing were in
various degrees, active or passive, principal or endorser,
parties to this legislation; and the fixed determination of the
Republican party to thwart and destroy it called down upon its
head all the anathemas of Democratic wrath. But it was just at
this point in our history when the Republican party was
compelled to decide whether the emancipated slave should be
protected by national power or handed over to his late master
to be dealt with in the spirit of the enactments I have quoted.

"To restore the Union on a safe foundation, and to re-establish
law and promote order, to insure justice and equal rights to
all, the Republican party was forced to its reconstruction
policy. To hesitate in its adoption was to invite and confirm
the statute of wr