the proclamation of President
Johnson in 1865, and before the assembling of Congress, developed
the fact that, notwithstanding the formal recognition by those
states of the abolition of slavery, the condition of the slave race
would, without further protection of the Federal Government, be
almost as bad as it was before. Among the first acts of legislation
adopted by several of the states in the legislative bodies which
claimed to be in their normal relations with the Federal
Government, were laws which imposed upon the colored race onerous
disabilities and burdens, and curtailed their rights in the pursuit
of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom
was of little value, while they had lost their protection which
they had received from their former owners from motives both of
interest and humanity."[7]

This is what happened to the Negro when the South was left alone to deal
with him and when he was voteless.

James G. Blaine truly said that:

"Without the right of citizenship his freedom could be maintained
only in name, and without the elective franchise his citizenship
would have no legitimate and no authoritative protection."

Fortunately for the Negro and for the continuance of free institutions
in the South, the nation slowly perceived this truth, but not until a
long and bitter struggle had been carried on by the friends of freedom
for manhood suffrage and human rights. These infamous, repressive and
enslaving laws finally aroused the nation's sense of justice and brought
it to the realization of the undeniable truth that in a free government
"the strong keen sword by which a freeman can protect all other rights
and give value to all other privileges is the elective franchise."

Yet in the full consciousness of this truth, attested beyond cavil by
the inhuman subjection of the Negro to the arrogant and oppressive will
of those who held peculiar notions about his "proper status," the
Federal Government hesitated to go the full length of its duty. It
stopped midway. The war seemed not to have convinced it of the futility
and fatality of compromising with the South. The Fourteenth Amendment
was adopted. The Negro was thereby given the right which his Southern
guardians proudly refused him--the right of citizenship--but not the
right which is alone the guarantee of the privileges of citizenship--the
right to a