proposed antislavery amendment to the Constitution of the United
States; but there is no power in Congress to enfranchise the negroes in
the States needing reconstruction, and, once assured of their freedom,
the freedmen would care little for the Union, of which they understand
nothing. They would vote, for the most part, with their former
masters, their employers, the wealthier and more intelligent classes,
whether loyal or disloyal; for, as a rule, these will treat them with
greater personal consideration and kindness than others. The dislike
of the negro, and hostility to negro equality, increase as you descend
in the social scale. The freedmen, without political instruction or
experience, who have had no country, no domicile, understand nothing of
loyalty or of disloyalty. They have strong local attachments, but they
can have no patriotism. If they adhered to the Union in the rebellion,
fought for it, bled for it, it was not from loyalty, but because they
knew that their freedom could come only from the success of the Union
arms. That freedom secured, they have no longer any interest in the
Union, and their local attachments, personal associations, habits,
tastes, likes and dislikes, are Southern, not Northern. In any contest
between the North and the South, they would take, to a man, the
Southern side. After the taunts of the women, the captured soldiers of
the Union found, until nearly the last year of the war, nothing harder
to bear, when marched as prisoners into Richmond, than the antics and
hootings of the negroes. Negro suffrage on the score of loyalty, is at
best a matter of indifference to the Union, and as the elective
franchise is not a natural right, but a civil trust, the friends of the
negro should, for the present, be contented with securing him simply
equal rights of person and property.

[1] This was the case in August, 1865. It may be quite otherwise
before these pages see the light.

CHAPTER XIV.

POLITICAL TENDENCIES.

The most marked political tendency of the American people has been,
since 1825, to interpret their government as a pure and simple
democracy, and to shift it from a territorial to a purely popular
basis, or from the people as the state, inseparably united to the
national territory or domain, to the people as simply population,
either as individuals or as the race. Their tendency has
unconsciously, therefore, been to change their constitution from a
republ