This period also contains the two extremes on the scale of discriminations against the American Negro in statute law. Before this period there were comparatively few statutory discriminations against the black race in the Southern States. For in that section the Negro had no personal rights at law, and discriminatory statutes were not necessary. When a discrimination is made against a class in statute law, it is thereby implied that this class has at least some rights based on the fundamental law of the land. Therefore the legislative discriminations against black people before this period were found chiefly in the border states and in the "free" states against "free" Negroes,—a strange contradiction of terms.—But this decade, from 1860 to 1870, also contains the extremes of the Negro’s legal status in the South: at the opening of the decade stood the Negro slave, at the close stood the Negro senator; after the middle of this period the South passed the extreme "Black Laws," intended to nullify the effect of the Thirteenth Amendment as far as possible, while at the end of the decade came the Fifteenth Amendment, marking an epoch. These "Black Laws" of the South were enacted between 1865 and 1868 and were inspired by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. They had for their models, it is said, the similar laws that had been passed in previous decades against the helpless "free" Negroes of the North and the border states. But they outdid the models. These "Black Laws" are worth considering, for in them are found a sufficient cause and a very cogent reason for the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendments. There is really no need for the charge that these two Amendments were the inspiration of revenge or of the desire for political advantage of the party in power. At any rate, such great products of statesmanship should stand on their merits, and not be condemned, even if it could be shown that they were originally based in unworthy motives. It does not lessen the beauty of the rose if the plant was sprouted in manure. But the argument of ultra-motive is unnecessary, for the "Black Laws" of the South were the immediate occasion, and doubtless the only efficient cause, of the Fourteenth Amendment. After the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, if the former slave states had accorded the ex-slaves even half justice, it is very likely that the Negro’s friends in Congress would have quickly forgotten him,—as they have since done in the face of the worst injustices. But it was not unnatural for the South, after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment which gave the Negro only the lowest degree of freedom, to try to pass systems of laws that would cause the Negro’s freedom to make as little change as possible in the social organism and in his relation to the white race. Not to have done so would have been evidence of superhuman foresight and self-control. From the standpoint of the