adopt it, that the Reconstruction Acts were the legitimate
offspring of that necessity. That the negro soldiers helped to
win the war is not proof that the war would have failed without
them, or that the necessary price of their valor was suffrage for
all the men of their race, the bulk of whom were not capable of
understanding it; or that such suffrage was necessary to the
preservation of the Union. Oratory, inside or outside of
Congress, is not historical proof.

Directing attention to my idea of the undoing of Reconstruction he
maintains:

Mr. Lynch's statement that the failure of Reconstruction was due
to unwise judicial interpretation need not be considered. It is
anachronistic and does not agree with the views now generally
accepted by historical students. But what he says of the
infidelity of Waite and Bradley can be refuted directly from the
Supreme Court Reports. As to the appointment of these justices,
there is no evidence that it was because of any specially strong
nationalistic position on their part. Bradley, if chosen for any
particular views, got the justiceship because of his attitude on
legal tender; and the conditions under which Waite was appointed
do not show up any such bias on his part. In U. S. _v._ Reese the
court stood seven to two; and the dissentients were Clifford, a
Democrat, and Hunt, appointed by Grant.

In U. S. _v._ Harris (the Ku Klux decision) Woods delivered the
decision. Harlan alone dissented and only on the question of
jurisdiction. The bench at that time held two judges appointed by
Lincoln, two by Grant, two by Hayes, one by Garfield, and two by
Arthur. The Civil Rights Cases decision was delivered by Bradley.
Harlan was the only dissenter. These were the three important
Reconstruction decisions during the term of Waite and Bradley.
All of them were delivered after Reconstruction had failed. On
the other hand, Bradley delivered the opinion in Ex parte
Siebold, in which the federal election laws were upheld, and
Field and Clifford were the only ones who disagreed with it.

In the first place, I frankly confess that what I have written and
shall write in defense of the reconstructed governments at the South
has been and will be of very little value if it were conceded that the
acts accredited to the men to whom I have ref