Page:Review of A Political History of Slavery.djvu/5

 Rh politics—"because," as Professor Halsey says, "the best thought of the North at last realized that it is impossible to solve the social and moral problems of a people from without." So far as the application of this vital principle in American government has wrought its logical and natural changes since Reconstruction times, the results and the failures of Reconstruction will be accepted without serious resistance. For there are few, if any, who now wish to quarrel with the old American idea that each state should solve its own social and political problems, subject only to the national law and interest, and with only such help as the state herself invites. But Professor Halsey's brief view of Reconstruction, though it is the one now generally put forward by fashionable university scholarship, will certainly not pass among all thoughtful and candid men without exciting some antagonisms and a list of exceptions. The author of the work for which he writes would certainly not have written such a chapter. Passing by the quiet assumption that Reconstruction statesmanship produced no successes worth mentioning, we note a few implications that may well be brought to the light of further inspection.

Professor Halsey speaks of the negro's "bidding a long farewell to the political arena," implying that that condition is desirable and final. All carpet-baggers are made to look alike,—alike execrable and odious, and he recognizes no redeeming or ameliorating virtue in the carpet-bag regime. He speaks of the Fifteenth amendment as giving the negro the ballot, "which has proved a curse rather than a blessing"—which implies a condemnation of that amendment. Under the conditions then existing in the south it may readily be recognized as unwise to have required manhood suffrage through the Reconstruction state constitutions imposed by Congressional power. The erection of acceptable state governments, soon to be left to local control, with the power to regulate the suffrage by suitable and rational qualifications, would perhaps have been wiser statesmanship. But as the Fifteenth Amendment confers the suffrage on no one, nor assumes power in the national government to do so, it would seem to be better for teachers of political science, instead of inveighing against the amendment, clearly to recognize the soundness of its doctrine that limitations on suffrage and political rights should never be based on the accidents of race or color. The writing of that principle in the fundamental law of the land may still be reasonably claimed as a success that was well worth achieving. Professor Halsey will probably very readily agree that, while the principle of manhood equality before the law, regardless of race or color, may be temporarily violated, it is safe to say that it will not be surrendered nor permanently reversed, not even by the consent of the best thought of the South itself.