And this political equality by decree, not by growth and development, caused many of the woes of Reconstruction. Two distinct impulses mark the effort of the South to disfranchise the Negro. The first was the blind revolt of Reconstruction times, in which force and fraud were frankly and openly applied. The effort to eliminate the Negro brought the white people together in one dominant party and the "Solid South" was born. For years this method sufficed; but in the meantime the Negro was getting a little education, acquiring self-consciousness, and developing leaders of more or less ability. It became necessary, therefore, both because the Negro was becoming more restive, less easily controlled by force, and because the awakening white man disliked and feared the basis of fraud on which his elections rested, to establish legal sanction for disfranchisement, to define the political status of the Negro by law. Now, the truth is that the mass of Southerners have _never believed that the Negro has or should have any political rights_. The South as a whole does not now approve and never has approved of the voting Negro. A few Negroes vote everywhere, "but not enough," as a Southerner said to me, "to do any hurt." The South, then, has been placed in the position of _providing by law for something that it did not really believe in_. [Illustration: COLONEL JAMES LEWIS United States Receiver at New Orleans] [Illustration: W. T. VERNON Register of the United States Treasury Photograph by G. V. Buck] [Illustration: RALPH W. TYLER An auditor of the Government at Washington] It was prophesied that when the Negro was disfranchised by law and "eliminated from politics" the South would immediately stop discussing the Negro question and divide politically along new lines. But this has not happened. Though disfranchisement laws have been in force in Mississippi for years there is less division in the white party of that state than ever before. Why is this so? Because the Negro, through gradual education and the acquisition of property, is becoming more and more a real as well as a potential factor in politics. For he is just beginning to be _really_ free. And the South has not yet decided how to deal with a Negro who owns property and is self-respecting and intelligent and who demands rights. The South is suspicious of this new Negro: it dreads him; and the politicians in power are quick to play upon this sentiment in order that the South may remain solid and the present political leadership remain undisturbed.