The overthrow of the carpet-bag governments, quietly yet effectively accomplished, removed the only danger of war between the blacks and whites. We can not well imagine another crisis so likely to bring about a conflict of that kind. The blacks were driven from power. Their desperate leaders would willingly have led them to fight, but the allegiance to the ancient masters was too strong, their trust in the carpet-bagger, for all his affectation of love, too slight to set them on that way. The negro fell back as near as might be to the place he held at the close of the war. His position was thereafter worse than it was at that station in his history, for the confidence and affection which the behavior of their servants during the rebellion had inspired was replaced in the mind of the dominant race by an abiding sense of the iniquities in which the ex-slaves had shared. Thereafter, and to this day, the black man is looked upon as a political enemy, who has to be watched lest he will again win a chance to control the state. In the greater part of the South this fear is passing away. In several States new laws concerning the franchise have made it practically impossible for the negro vote to be a source of danger for some time to come--until, indeed, the negro is better educated and has property. There is a share of iniquity in these laws, as there is apt to be in all actions relating to a situation that rests on ancient evils, but their effect is better than that of terrorism and tissue ballots which it replaces. They will afford time for the new adjustments to be effected. In considering the present conditions of the negro, we may first note the important fact that he is hard at work. The production of the South clearly shows that the sometime slaves, or rather their children, are laboring even more effectively than they did in the time of legal servitude. This disposes of the notion that the blacks will not work without other compulsion than those needs which bend the backs of his white brethren. It is evident that the generation born since the war is laborious and productive up to, if not beyond, the average of men. It is also plain that they are fitted for a rather wider range of employment than they were accustomed to follow as slaves. The negro has proved himself well adapted for labor in mines and about furnaces--in all places, indeed, where strength and a moderate share of intelligence are required. The fear that he would desert the land and flock to the cities has not been justified. He appears less disposed to yield to the temptations of the great towns than the whites. The first rage of the freed people for schooling seems to have passed. A good many of them are getting the rudiments of an education, some few a larger culture, but there appears to be danger that the folk may lapse into indifference concerning all training that is not immediately profitable.