ants, whether voters or not, was secured by the Constitution, and that instrument even allowed three-fifths representation for slaves. New York, Ohio and other states denied the ballot to free negroes; some states excluded by property qualifications and others by educational tests, yet all enjoyed representation for all their peoples.

The reply to this was that the Constitution ought to be amended because the South would now have, if negroes were denied the ballot, a larger proportion of non-voters than the North. Southern people were slow to see that this was good reason for change in the Constitution, especially as they believed they were already entitled to representation, and conceived that they ought to have a voice in proposing as well as in the ratification of amendments. Five of the restored states had already ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, and such ratification had been counted valid. If they were states, they were certainly entitled to representation. So they claimed.

It was perhaps imprudent for Southern people at that time to undertake to chop logic with their conquerors, or indeed to claim any rights at all-as the net results of their insistence were, that they were called "impudent claimants" by the Republican Convention at Pittsburgh, and indeed everywhere in the Republican press.

The insuperable objection, however, to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was to be found in the clause which required the people of the late Confederate States to disfranchise their own leaders, to brand with dishonor those who had led them in peace and in war.

The rejection of this amendment at the South greatly strengthened the Republican position; because the North, looking at it from a different stand-point, thought the proposition a fair one. If any among those who proposed the amendment intended it should be rejected, it was shrewdly devised; if it was not intended to procure its own rejection, then it was clumsily contrived.

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU.

Even before the close of the war public sentiment had demanded some provision for the protection of the liberated

slaves, who everywhere came flocking into the Union lines. The result was the establishment by law, March 3d, 1865, of a Freedmen's Bureau, which was speedily extended, after hostilities had ceased, into all the late Confederate States. The law made the agents of this Bureau guardians of freedmen, with power to make their contracts, settle their disputes with employers and care for them generally. The position of Bureau agent was one of power and responsibility, capable of being used beneficently, and sometimes, no doubt, it was; but these officials were subjected to great temptation.

Many people, who believed that the newly emancipated slave needed a guardian to take care of him, believed also that, if he only had the ballot, he could take care of himself and the country, too. In fact, the sentiment in favor of universal suffrage was already strong, even in the spring of 1865; and it was natural for every Bureau agent, who might have a turn for politics, to conclude that, with the Bureau's help, Mr. Stevens and his friends might eventually succeed in giving the negro the ballot. The Bureau agent was "the next friend " of the negro. With negro suffrage, this official's fortune was made. Without it, of course, this stranger had no hope of office in the South. It was not therefore to his interest, if he had political aspirations, that there should be peace between the races.

From conscientious men, connected with this Bureau, General Grant obtained the information upon which he based the opinion, given to the President in the report already quoted from, that "the belief widely spread among the freedmen of the Southern states that the lands of their former owners will, at least in part, be divided among them, has come from the agents of this Bureau. This belief is seriously interfering with the willingness of the freedmen to make contracts for the coming year." And he further said: 'Many, perhaps the majority, of the agents of the Freedmen's Bureau advise the freedmen that by their own industry they must expect to live. In some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman's mind does not seem to be disabused of the idea that he has a right to live without care or provision for the future. The

effect of the belief in the division of lands is idleness and accumulation in camps, towns and cities."

The first lesson in the horn-book of liberty for the freedman obviously was, that in the sweat of his face he must earn his bread-a law unto all men since the days of Adam. It is a sad commentary on the workings of the Bureau, that the best thing General Grant could say of its agents was, that many, and perhaps a majority of them," did so advise. If these officials were really responsible, as General Grant believed, for the demoralized labor condition at the South-and their power over the freedmen is beyond all question-then they were, in fact, organizing chaos where their mission was peace and good order.

Nearly every one of these agents, who remained South after reconstruction, was a candidate for office; and many actually became Governors, Judges, Legislators, Congressmen, Postmasters, Revenue officers, etc.

Such a situation as confronted Southern Legislatures in the fall and early winter of 1865 was never before witnessed in America. Prior to 1861 the laws to compel people to industrious habits were not generally so stringent in the South as in the North. This resulted partly from slavery and partly from the easy conditions of life in a mild climate. There were no laws that met the new situation. New and stringent statutes were passed to prevent vagrancy and idleness. There is not space here to discuss these laws. They will be treated of in a subsequent chapter and compared with statutes then in force in Northern states. Suffice it to say now, they did not merit the odium visited upon them by many honest Northern voters, who, not understanding the situation, were led to believe them nothing short of an effort to re-enslave the negro, when their purpose was simply to counteract the teachings that had demoralized the freedman and compel him to industrious habits.

THE COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN.

The passage of the concurrent resolution in December 1865, to inquire into the condition of the late Confederate

States meant open hospitality `to the Presidential plan. Having declared war the dominant party of course exercised great care in selecting members to serve on the committee which was to make this inquiry. Mr. Blaine (Vol. II., p. 127) says:

"It was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen." Speaker Colfax and the appointing power in the Senate put on the committee twelve Republicans and only three Democrats, one from the Senate and two from the House.

The field from which testimony was to be drawn was the unrepresented South. On the sub-committee which took testimony as to Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, there was not a Democrat to call or to question a witness. The only hope of fair play lay in the magnanimity or sense of justice of men who had already voted to refuse admission to the Southern members and who were placed upon the committee with the expectation, as Mr. Blaine has indicated, that they would take care of the Republican party. There is not space here to discuss the evidence of the witnesses, who chose or were chosen to come before these gentlemen. It consists of hundreds of pages of speculative testimony, hearsay, etc.

The crimes committed, in the most peaceful times, within eighteen consecutive months, among any population of eight millions, would, if industriously arrayed, make a fearful record. To make that arraignment of the late Confederate States was the task to which this able committee addressed itself in 1866.

The situation in these states was peculiar. When the surviving soldiers returned from the field, around their desolated homes they found four millions of slaves suddenly manumitted. The returning soldiers were themselves more or less affected by that demoralization which is an unfailing consequence of protracted war. The negroes were demoralized by their newly-found freedom. They turned, for the most part, a deaf ear to the advice of their old masters and listened with avidity to the tales that were bruited about, said to have

come from the stranger friends who had freed them, to the effect that the lands of their rebel masters were to be confiscated and divided among them. It is impossible that, under such circumstances, however earnestly all good citizens might strive for the general good, there should not have been friction between the races. Yet, notwithstanding the extraordinary and unprecedented conditions there was, to General Grant, nothing, as his report already quoted shows, in the situation there in the fall of 1865, that was not creditable to the masses of the people. General Grant was not in politics. The gentlemen of the committee of fifteen were; and a few words as to the treatment of one state, as a sample, will suffice to show that the methods employed were such as to allow no rational expectation of reaching correct conclusions. As to the condition in Alabama only five persons, who claimed to be citizens, were examined. These were all Republican politicians. The testimony of each was bitterly partisan; under the government of the state as it then existed, no one of these witnesses could hope for official preferment. In his testimony each was striving for the overthrow of his existing state government, and the setting up of some such institutions as followed under Congressional reconstruction. When this reconstruction had finally taken place, the first of these five witnesses became Governor of his state; the second became a Senator in Congress; the third secured a life position in one of the departments at Washington; the fourth became a circuit judge in Alabama, and the fifth a judge of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia-all as Republicans. There was no Democrat in the sub-committee, which examined these gentlemen, to cross-examine them; and not a citizen of Alabama was called before that sub-committee to answer or explain their evidence. Of the report of this committee, based upon evidence taken by such methods, Mr. Blaine permits himself to say (Vol. II. p. 9): "That report is to be taken as an absolutely truthful picture of the Southern states at that time."

The first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress now came to a close. Besides the passage, over the President's objections, of a still more radical Freedmen's Bureau Bill than that de