Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/45

 population of full political rights. Disorders and outrages on the negroes became frequent, which the State Governments, though based on negro suffrage, and the Federal army could not repress. After a time the Federal troops were withdrawn, and the white population regained control of the State Governments. The outrages diminished, but the coloured citizens were henceforth, in this third stage, prevented, at first chiefly by force, and afterwards chiefly by fraud, from exercising their right of suffrage. And now a fourth stage has arrived, in which several State Constitutions have been so altered as practically to exclude the vast majority of the negro voters, evading the amendment of 1870 to the Federal Constitution which was enacted for their benefit. These voters have now generally acquiesced in their position: and the political side of the question attracts less notice than the frequent cases in which negroes are lynched, sometimes with circumstances of hideous cruelty, for offences (not always proved) which excite peculiar horror.

The moral to be drawn from the case of the Southern States seems to be that you must not, however excellent your intentions and however admirable your sentiments, legislate in the teeth of facts. The great bulk of the negroes were not fit for the suffrage; nor under the American Federal system was it possible (without incurring other grave evils) to give them effective protection in the exercise of the suffrage. It would, therefore, have been better to postpone the bestowal of this dangerous boon. True it is that rocks and