their friends, the Yankees. Phelps attempted to organize the Negroes who came into troops. Accordingly he too was outlawed by the Confederates and his act disavowed by the Union, that was not ready to take this step. It was not until a great many men had been killed, and until the Emancipation Proclamation had changed the status of the Negro, that steps were taken by the Union for his employment as a soldier. Opinion in his favor gained force after the Draft Riot in New York, when Negroes in the city were mobbed and beaten by the enemies of conscription. Soon a distinct bureau was established in Washington for the recording of all matters pertaining to Negro troops, a board was organized for the examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. By the end of 1864 nearly 200,000 Negroes had been enrolled in the army. The exploits of these men at Port Hudson, Fort Wagner, and Fort Pillow are a part of the romance of American History.

The Civil War meant more than the emancipation of four million slaves, with all the perplexing problems that that liberation brought with it; it involved the overturning of the whole economic system of the South. To educate the freedmen, to train them in citizenship, and to give them a place in the new labor system, was all a problem calling for the wisest statesmanship and the largest and most unselfish patriotism. Strange contradictions moreover were frequently in evidence to increase the practical difficulties of the situation. Some Negroes, because of personal attachment, refused to leave their former masters; while the South in general, although it laid all its ills at the door of the Negro, violently opposed any considerable effort to have him taken away.

What was the Federal Government to do with the freedman? Of course it could leave him alone. Having emancipated him, it could let him work out his destiny as he would. In view of the situation, however, and the principles for which the war had been fought, such a course was manifestly impossible, especially as the so-called Black Codes of some of the Southern states raised the question if the results of the war were really being accepted in good faith. The next course then was some form of Federal oversight; and thus we have the Freedmen's Bureau. The best exposition of the work of this institution is to be found in the writings of Dr. DuBois. It started the ex-slaves on their new career as free laborers, gave them recognition before the courts, and established the free common school in the South. It did not wholly guard its methods from paternalism, however; it did not live up to its implied promise to furnish the freedmen with land; and, worst of all, when the Negroes in spite of all their disadvantages had actually accumulated a total of three million dollars, the same being deposited in the Freedman's Bank, this bank, morally if not technically a part of the Freedmen's Bureau, failed, and the former slaves, at the very beginning of their economic freedom, received a severe blow not only to their confidence in the good faith of their government but also to that in the virtues of self-reliance and thrift. Gradually, through the efforts of Charles Sumner in the Senate and Thaddeus Stevens in the House, the conviction was forced upon the country that the only solution of the problem was to give the Negro the ballot as the full protection of his citizenship. Thus in 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment was passed. All the logic of the situation demanded it, in spite of temporary disadvantages; and yet it has never since ceased to be bewailed in some quarters as a grave political error, even by such a representative student as James Bryce. In proof of this position theft and the incompetency of officials in the Reconstruction era are cited, when everybody knows that the carpetbaggers rather than the freedmen themselves received most of the spoil, and that the good points of the Reconstruction governments, such as the emphasis on common school education, have just as sedulously been belittled. In 1875 the second Civil Rights Act was passed, designed to give Negroes equality of treatment in theaters, railway cars, hotels, etc.; but this the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883. Meanwhile the KuKlux Klan was already at work; the withdrawal of the Federal troops and the wholesale removal of disabilities by Congress weakened the Reconstruction governments; and thus the way was paved for democratic success in the South.

Now ensued a period of such harshness in the ordinary life of the Negro as can not easily be imagined. The general lack of protection in the country districts and the greater economic attractiveness of the cities led many laborers to leave the farms and to find an outlet in some other occupations. To counteract this movement the "convict lease system" appeared in all its hideousness. By every possible means the effort was made to bind the Negro laborer to the soil, and in numberless instances not even the sanctity of his home life was regarded. At the same time, in ordinary intercourse with his fellowmen, many times a day was he subjected to personal indignities. By 1879, by reason of such things as these, as well as excessive rents and the exorbitant prices at some stores, matters had become so bad as in many places to be no longer tolerable. Not unnaturally many Negroes had come to fear that they were about to be remanded to slavery. A general convention in Nashville in May, 1879, adopted a report that set forth their grievances and encouraged migration to the North and West. Thousands now left their homes in the South, going in greatest numbers to Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana. Within about twenty months Kansas alone received thus an addition to her population of 40,000 Negroes. Difficulties of adjustment of course arose, but the whole movement was sufficient to prove utterly false the contention of some that no amount of unfairness and injustice in the South would induce the Negro to move away.

As the KuKlux Klan declined, however, and the Negro, in spite of discouraging circumstances, steadily advanced in property, education, and culture, more and more the South felt the need of reënforcing its position by definite legislation. In 1890 the era of disfranchisement was formally inaugurated. In this year Mississippi so amended her constitution as to exclude from the suffrage any person who had not paid his poll-tax or who was unable to read any section of the Constitution, understand it when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation of it. Real discretion in interpretation of course lay only with the registrars, who could admit just so many persons as they deemed of good character and as understanding the duties of citizenship. South Carolina amended her constitution to similar purpose in 1895; and in 1898 Louisiana invented the so-called "grandfather clause." This excused from the operation of her disfranchising act all descendants of men who had voted before the Civil War, thus admitting to the suffrage all white men who were illiterate and without property. Other Southern states in one way or another followed these three. In the final estimate of history the whole effort must appear simply as a pathetic attempt to delay the full operation of justice and the rights of man.

For the present, however, the question of the Negro's attitude toward the problem was one of surpassing moment. Suddenly, in 1895, arose a new and genuine leader, Booker T. Washington, who offered a very definite program. In a remarkable speech at the Atlanta Exposition he said to the white South: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual