Page:Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction.djvu/241

Rh Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Kansas, had refused to extend the right of voting to the blacks, while manifesting entire sympathy with the Congressional policy of reconstruction. It was the condition of feeling thus indicated that found expression in the national platform:

The guarantee by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all the loyal states properly belongs to the people of these states.

But the flush of victory actually achieved quickly banished from further consideration the policy foreshadowed by this declaration. That the permanency of what reconstruction had effected in the South was insecure, was made very obvious by the fact of Democratic victory in Georgia and Louisiana. The "fundamental conditions" which afforded the only basis for Congressional maintenance of negro suffrage in the restored states were regarded by a large majority of constitutional lawyers in both parties as of doubtful validity. Under the circumstances a further amendment to the constitution was the only resort that could be depended upon for the end desired. Hence the Fifteenth Amendment was, after a long and ardent discussion of the whole field of political phi-