Had the policy of the Ku-Klux Klan been continued, and had public sympathy been accorded to its warfare, the cause of the negroes must have gone down until the race became a very genuine danger to the Government. The change in public opinion in the South is not only one of the most cheering signs of the times, but many of Booker Washington's most earnest sympathisers and helpers are actually found in the former slave States. In the _Southern Letter_ for May 1901, a little monthly newspaper which the founder of the Tuskegee Institution issues from his headquarters, a Southern lady of position, who was formerly a slave-owner, writes:-- "God speed you in your noble work! Whenever I hear it said, 'The Caucasian blood in Booker Washington is the cause of his success and perseverance,' I answer, 'It is Principle.' I am a Southern white woman, once a slave-owner, educated to think it right, and to believe that coloured people could not provide for themselves, but would return to cannibalism if brought from under their masters, and so I thought it would be an awful thing for both races if they should be emancipated. I have long ago seen the folly of such opinions, and have seen that slavery was a horrible thing, and no one is more rejoiced than I am to see the progress and prosperity and enlightenment of the coloured people. Though a stranger in person, I am your true friend." During the twelve years which followed the close of the Civil War, the Southern States were in a condition of unrest, which was natural, however, and was such as might have been expected after such a crisis as that which had shaken and threatened the very existence of the Republic. Considering what the relationship between the whites and the blacks had been, and what kind of traditional views the former had been trained to receive concerning the inferiority of the coloured race, we cannot wonder that the planters, and those who were with them, should have been appalled at the outlook. The situation became more anomalous, or even dangerous, through the mistakes of the Northern politicians, quite as much as through any want of charity, whether real or imaginary, on the part of the Southern statesmen. There were wounds to be healed on both sides, and there was too much of a disposition to maintain the vindictive war spirit after the war was over. Those who aimed at reconstruction certainly endangered their cause when they suddenly gave to the negroes greater political privileges than they understood, or would be able to use with any advantage to themselves. It would seem that some ludicrous instances occurred of even the lower kind of negroes being installed in important State offices. The result of this and many more indiscretions was naturally to foment feelings of great bitterness on both sides. If many in the North were disposed to make the emancipated slaves a bone of contention--a means of punishing the States which had wished to secede and to found a Commonwealth of their