o far as to escape
slavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural South
and was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despite
everything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knell
of slavery.

The steps toward the Fifteenth Amendment were taken slowly. First Negroes
were allowed to take part in reconstructing the state governments. This
was inevitable if loyal governments were to be obtained. Next the restored
state governments were directed to enfranchise all citizens, black or
white, or have their representation in Congress cut down proportionately.
Finally the United States said the last word of simple justice: the states
may regulate the suffrage, but no state may deprive a person of the right
to vote simply because he is a Negro or has been a slave.

For such reasons the Negro was enfranchised. What was the result? No
language has been spared to describe these results as the worst
imaginable. This is not true. There were bad results, and bad results
arising from Negro suffrage; but those results were not so bad as usually
painted, nor was Negro suffrage the prime cause of many of them. Let us
not forget that the white South believed it to be of vital interest to its
welfare that the experiment of Negro suffrage should fail ignominiously
and that almost to a man the whites were willing to insure this failure
either by active force or passive acquiescence; that besides this there
were, as might be expected, men, black and white, Northern and Southern,
only too eager to take advantage of such a situation for feathering their
own nests. Much evil must result in such case; but to charge the evil to
Negro suffrage is unfair. It may be charged to anger, poverty, venality,
and ignorance, but the anger and poverty were the almost inevitable
aftermath of war; the venality was much greater among whites than Negroes
both North and South, and while ignorance was the curse of Negroes, the
fault was not theirs and they took the initiative to correct it.

The chief charges against the Negro governments are extravagance, theft,
and incompetency of officials. There is no serious charge that these
governments threatened civilization or the foundations of social order.
The charge is that they threatened property and that they were
inefficient. These charges are in part undoubtedly true, but they are
often exaggerated. The South had been terribly impoverished and saddled
wit