The 13th amendment legally abolished slavery, and, strange as it may seem, this provision of the organic law, brought the word “slavery” into the constitution for the first time. The 14th amendment prescribed citizenship for the Negro, and the 15th amendment put into his hands the ballot as a weapon of defense against those who were cruelly persecuting him. For it is a part of the history of the period immediately following the Civil War that “Black codes” were enacted in some of the southern states, so awful in their effect that the poor freedmen were reduced to a condition not far removed from slavery itself. None but those who can recall these days of terror can fully appreciate what the elective franchise did for the Negro at that time. Under the circumstances, freedom for him without the ballot would have been the merest mockery. The terrible persecutions inflicted upon loyal white men and upon Negroes determined Congress as Oliver P. Morton said, “in the last resort, and as the last thing to be done, to dig through all the rubbish, dig through the soil and the shifting sands and go down to the eternal rock, and there upon the basis of the everlasting principle of equal and exact justice to all men, plant the column of reconstruction.” The charge that Congress intended to establish Negro political supremacy in the southern states is false. For, if it had been the purpose of Congress to do this, the suggestion of Charles Sumner would have been adopted and all men who had been concerned in the rebellion would have been excluded from the suffrage. “Negro domination” has always been a false alarm and a myth. It has never existed. Even when the black man’s vote was honestly counted it was cast so as to make the white man the dominating influence in the political life of the state. It is a popular thing nowadays to say that the ballot was given the Negro too soon, or he would be better off, if it had not been given him at all. I know not by what system of reasoning these conclusions are reached. For “freedom is the school in which freemen are taught, and the ballot box is the educator.” A man must have his political rights, in order to protect his natural rights. It is most fortunate that the elective franchise was given to the Negro so soon after his emancipation. At that time, the North, at least, was friendly to him. It looked upon him as a ward. But when we consider the attitude of hostility which the white American in all parts of the country has assumed towards the colored American in recent years, we must conclude that if the ballot had not already been given him, it would not be granted for a long time to come.