en's Bureau established for ten, twenty,
or forty years, with a careful distribution of land and capital and a
system of education for the children, might have prevented such an
extension of slavery. But the country would not listen to such a
comprehensive plan. A restricted grant of the suffrage voluntarily made by
the states would have been a reassuring proof of a desire to treat the
freedmen fairly and would have balanced in part, at least, the increased
political power of the South. There was no such disposition evident.

In Louisiana, for instance, under the proposed reconstruction "not one
Negro was allowed to vote, though at that very time the wealthy
intelligent free colored people of the state paid taxes on property
assessed at fifteen million dollars and many of them were well known for
their patriotic zeal and love for the Union."[101]

Thus the arguments for universal Negro suffrage from the start were strong
and are still strong, and no one would question their strength were it not
for the assumption that the experiment failed. Frederick Douglass said to
President Johnson, "Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands
the sword to assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his
able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot
with which to save ourselves."[102]

Carl Schurz wrote, "It is idle to say that it will be time to speak of
Negro suffrage when the whole colored race will be educated, for the
ballot may be necessary to him to secure his education."[103]

The granting of full Negro suffrage meant one of two alternatives to the
South: (1) The uplift of the Negro for sheer self-preservation. This is
what Schurz and the saner North expected. As one Southern school
superintendent said, "The elevation of this class is a matter of prime
importance, since a ballot in the hands of a black citizen is quite as
potent as in the hands of a white one." Or (2) Negro suffrage meant a
determined concentration of Southern effort by actual force to deprive the
Negro of the ballot or nullify its use. This last is what really happened.
But even in this case, so much energy was taken in keeping the Negro from
voting that the plan for keeping him in virtual slavery and denying him
education partially failed. It took ten years to nullify Negro suffrage in
part and twenty years to escape the fear of federal intervention. In these
twenty years a vast number of Negroes had arisen s