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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cast them down. Those of the poorest imaginations looked for 

 forty acres of land and a mule. In the resulting political corrup- 

 tion the native whites and blacks endured even greater losses than 

 the war had inflicted, the most grievous being a great unsettling 

 of the relations between the races. The way in which the white 

 men of the better sort met this trial is fit to be compared with the 

 best political achievements of their folk. Gradually, on the whole 

 without violence, for they had to abstain from that, working within 

 the limits of the Constitution to which they had been forced to 

 trust for their remedies, they rewon control of their wasted com- 

 munities, and brought them back to civilized order. There was a 

 share of terrorism and shame from such devices as tissue ballots to 

 lessen the dignity of this remarkable work, yet it remains a great 

 achievement — one that goes far to redeem the folly of the seces- 

 sion movement. The full significance of this action is yet to be 

 comprehended. 



The overthrow of the carpet-bag governments, quietly yet ef- 

 fectively accomplished, removed the only danger of war between 

 the blacks and whites. We can not well imagine another crisis so 

 likely to bring about a conflict of that kind. The blacks were 

 driven from power. Their desperate leaders would willingly have 

 led them to fight, but the allegiance to the ancient masters was 

 too strong, their trust in the carpet-bagger, for all his affectation 

 of love, too slight to set them on that way. The negro fell back 

 as near as might be to the place he held at the close of the war. 

 His position was thereafter worse than it was at that station in his 

 history, for the confidence and affection which the behavior of their 

 servants during the rebellion had inspired was replaced in the mind 

 of the dominant race by an abiding sense of the iniquities in which 

 the ex-slaves had shared. Thereafter, and to this day, the black 

 man is looked upon as a political enemy, who has to be watched 

 lest he will again win a chance to control the state. In the greater 

 part of the South this fear is passing away. In several States new 

 laws concerning the franchise have made it practically impossible 

 for the negro vote to be a source of danger for some time to come — 

 until, indeed, the negro is better educated and has property. There 

 is a share of iniquity in these laws, as there is apt to be in all 

 actions relating to a situation that rests on ancient evils, but their 

 effect is better than that of terrorism and tissue ballots which it 

 replaces. They will afford time for the new adjustments to be 

 effected. 



In considering the present conditions of the negro, we may 

 first note the important fact that he is hard at work. The pro- 

 duction of the South clearly shows that the sometime slaves, or 



