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The idea originally held in a loose fashion by all the states, asserted strongly at one time by certain Northern states, and to this day firmly believed by a vast majority of Southern people; that in the adoption and ratification of the National Constitution they retained and reserved to themselves the right and privilege to repudiate that instrument and retire from the Union at will, seems to us-as it did to Lincoln-to have no real foundation in fact. person, or a people, may have a most absolute belief in a thing without the slightest foundation for such a belief this seems to have been the case as regards the right of states to withdraw from the Union. To our way of thinking there is not a clause or a word in the entire document that can be logically so construed as to contemplate its own abrogation, or confer upon, or reserve to, the several states, respectively, the right to disassociate themselves from that compact. The circumstance that the states firmly believed that such was their prerogative in no wise alters the verity.

Slavery was the real gauge of battle, but the preservation of the Constitution and the saving of the Union had now superseded former issues, and become uppermost in the mind of Lincoln. But for his extraordinary virtues this nation would have been hopelessly torn asunder, for during those trying years of war the North was more than once ready to abandon the contest and allow the South to go in peace.

As the years wore on, however, the physical exhaustion of the otherwise unyielding South became more and more apparent, and the passing of the iniquitous institution of slavery was seen to be merely a matter of time. The despised black man was to come into his natural and constitutional rights of

freedom, and to enter the inglorious contest with the white man for the survival of the fittest.

The details of the war have no bearing upon the solution of the Negro question. The valor of the Southern soldier needs no commendation here; his splendid qualities in war and in peace are matters of universal admiration. The only way the misguided South was ever conquered was by Grant's system of attrition, which finally exhausted and completely prostrated the noble, and once stalwart, Confederacy. She no longer had men and money with which to prolong the struggle. The familiar and pathetic story of Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, is fresh in the memories of all. His remnant of an army, which had shown in many battles the most indomitable spirit, was now reduced to absolute impotency. His men were in rags and starving. Lee's actual capitulation might possibly have been deferred for a time-possibly for a week-but when he saw that the last glimmering ray of hope had forever faded from the bosom of the lowering shades of adversity, his great soul would not sanction the ruthless sacrifice of the faithful few.

That the black man is wonderfully subject to his immediate environs and childlike in that his mental attitude can be readily moulded by his superiors, is nowhere better illustrated than in those turbulent times of Civil War and Reconstruction. While the master was bearing arms and doing battle to perpetuate the institution of human slavery, the servant was at home tenderly guarding and protecting the women and children he left behind, and tilling the soil to feed an army to fight against his freedom. The Negro slave really did not know what the great Civil War meant. He had a certain consciousness that war was being waged against his master, and

was in the habit of regarding any injury to the master as a loss to himself. His mental attitude towards the master and the family was very like that of the shepherd dog towards the flock; he had been trained to guard and serve them, and this he continued to do partly through force of habit.

The mental capacities of the Negro are limited— very limited, but it is far from truth to regard him as devoid of virtue. His commendable and uniform faithfulness during the trying period of Civil War is sufficient in itself to dispel this notion for all time. Properly trained, he was then, and is now, in many relations of life, a highly virtuous man. This wholesale condemnation of the race is unjustifiable and misleading. Treated with uniform kindness, and strict discipline and justice, he is capable of becoming a law-abiding and useful citizen in the menial occupations that do not require self-reliance and intellectual acumen. In these higher qualities, however, he is notoriously and almost uniformly deficient. The greatest honor and distinction which the Negro has ever won was his faithfulness and loyalty to his master's family during the Civil War. There seems to be no record of his violating this sacred trust. This was due to early training and environment, and should ever redown to the credit of the race.

Striking and significant was the sudden change that came over him as a result of the lamentable folly of Reconstruction times. The absurd policies and teachings of the North transformed him into an enemy of the white population and a perpetrator of brutal crime. The Negro was taught to hate his white neighbor and to oppose him in all matters of politics. In the first place all men who know the Negro character and his deficiencies will, we sup

pose, agree that it was unwise to suddenly confer upon him the right of franchise. He had no conception of how to use it, and became the mere tool of the corrupt politician. If the two races were to live together which was necessary-amity and a continuation of mutual toleration and respect, with white domination, were the only possible conditions, but amity and mutual respect were for a time at least largely destroyed by the reign of the carpetbaggers; nor have its direful consequences yet wholly disappeared. Second only to the conflict itself was the chapter of errors committed at Washington by those in authority after the assassination of Lincoln. President Johnson attempted to execute Lincoln's policies, but Congress took the matter out of his hands and very naturally, but most unfortunately, and unwisely, attempted to cloth the Negro with powers which he had not the remotest idea how to exercise, and then infested the conquered territory with agents who taught the Negro to despise and oppose the superior race with which he had to live. It was impossible that the consequences to both races could be other than evil. Under this system the Negro responded readily and became the bitter enemy, and a constant source of danger to his white neighbors, whom he had so recently defended and protected with such commendable fidelity. Childlike, as regards his intellectual development he was, and is, easy to influence for either good or bad. All these facts are in perfect accord with our chapters on Evidences of Mental Inferiority, and given the facts there recorded, his conduct, under these given conditions might almost have been foretold.

The Negro was systematically taught that the petty agents of the Government who had come among them to protect them from re-enslavement

by Southern whites, were not only the agents of their deliverers, but the custodians of their rights as enfranchised freedmen. That their only hope was to set themselves in political opposition to their former masters, and assert, in every possible way, their social and political equality. Such pernicious doctrines poured continually into the ears of the feebleminded Negro practically amounted to drenching the soil with his blood, and removing from his reach the very food which had ever been so abundant. He assumed an air of self-importance and self-assertiveness, which engendered a new race prejudice, and caused the South to deny him the right of franchise, and to a large extent, the ordinary civil rights in the courts. In this state of feeling the very law of selfpreservation came conspicuously to the front, and the prejudice came to be so strong that the cry of the black man for civil justice before Southern courts and juries was a mere farce-the verdict being predetermined in many cases before the evidence was heard. Especially was this true in cases of personal violence. It was thoroughly understood that no jury would punish a respectable white man for violence toward a black one. In fact they were almost afraid to punish even a very bad white man because of the moral effect upon the Negroes wherever such facts were heralded.

If Lincoln had lived to complete the term in the White House upon which he had so recently entered, and Congress could have been forced or persuaded to allow him to deal with the question of Reconstruction-which he believed it his constitutional prerogative to do by far the greater part of all these troubles would have been foreseen and averted. The South never lost a more useful friend. Bias and prejudice seem to have had no abode in the mind of