198 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



traitors they must be considered until time could in part destroy 

 the keenness of their recollections. Anything which approached 

 clemency was to be suspiciously watched as possible weakness or in- 

 sincerity. It was this feeling of intense suspicion and distrust which 

 caused these radical Republicans to look upon Johnson with decided 

 disfavor while he was so rapidly carrying out his policy of the res- 

 toration of the state governments during 1865. 



However, long before it was definitely decided just what policy 

 should be adopted in the reconstruction of the South, it was recog- 

 nized that sooner or later there would be legally organized State gov- 

 ernments in the conquered districts and that these states would be 

 entitled to representation in Congress. As the Constitution then 

 stood, there would be nothing to prevent these states from legally 

 reversing all their actions after they had successfully passed through 

 the preliminary stages, which the forthcoming reconstruction plans 

 might require. Therefore good politics demanded that the Consti- 

 tution be amended so as to prevent the most serious of the dangers 

 which they believed threatened them. 



There already had grown up throughout the North a strong 

 feeling in favor of giving the negro the ballot. It is an open ques- 

 tion as to how far humanitarian ideas are to be held responsible for 

 this feeling. It is to be feared that political plans were largely 

 responsible. The Republicans had good reason to believe that they 

 could control almost the entire negro vote as the freedmen could 

 easily be persuaded that their present freedom was due entirely to 

 the Republicans and that the permanence of their freedom as well 

 as their future prosperity could be assured only as a result of their 

 unswerving loyalty to the party. Under these conditions they figured 

 that the enfranchisement of the negro, especially if this could be 

 coupled with some restrictions on the active participants of the Re- 

 bellion, would insure for an indefinite period Republican control in 

 the Southern States. 



On the other hand to give the negro the ballot entailed no 

 damage or hardship to the Northern States for the vote there would 

 be practically infinitesimal. The plan therefore possessed everything 



