ition when signed
to your representative in Congress, at your earliest convenience.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, LUCY STONE.]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEGRO'S HOUR.

1866.

The reconstruction period of our government was no less trying a time
than the four years of warfare which preceded it. The Union had been
preserved but the disorganization of the Southern States was complete.
Lincoln, whose cool judgment, restraining wisdom and remarkable genius
for understanding and persuading men never had been more needed, was
dead by the hand of an assassin. In his place was a man, rash,
headlong, aggressive, stubborn, distrusted by the party which had
placed him in power. This chief executive had to deal not only with the
great, perplexing questions which always follow upon the close of a
war, but with these rendered still more difficult by the great mass of
bewildered and helpless negroes, ignorant of how to care for
themselves, with no further claims upon their former owners, and yet
destined to live among them. The immense Republican majority in
Congress found itself opposed by a President, southern in birth and
sympathy and an uncompromising believer in State Rights.

The southern legislatures, while accepting the Thirteenth Amendment,
which prohibited slavery, passed various laws whose effect could not be
other than to keep the negro in a condition of "involuntary servitude."
To the South these measures seemed to be demanded by ordinary prudence
to retain at least temporary control of a race unfitted for a wise use
of liberty; to the North they appeared a determination to evade the
provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, and Congress decided upon more
radical measures. One wing of the old Abolitionists, under the
leadership of Phillips, had steadfastly insisted that there could be no
real freedom without the ballot. Several attempts had been made to
secure congressional action for the enfranchisement of the negro, which
the majority of Republicans had now come to see was essential for his
protection, and these resulted finally in the submission of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Charles Sumner stated that he covered nineteen
pages of foolscap in his effort so to formulate it as to omit the word
"male" and, at the same time, secure the ballot for the negro.

When Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton sounded the alarm, the old leaders
in the movement for woman's rights came at once to their aid, but they
were soo