other, and the years immediately succeeding the Civil War were perhaps richer in patriotic platform oratory and in political corruption than any the country has ever seen. CHAPTER XVI FAILURE AND CONDEMNATION OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE AFTER A TEN YEARS’ EXPERIMENT IN THE SOUTHERN STATES Perhaps the most noted instance of a complete test of the principles upon which manhood suffrage claims to be founded was that made in the Southern States during the so-called reconstruction period from 1866 to 1876, when the establishment by the Federal Government of unrestricted suffrage in a dozen states where a considerable part of the population was composed of negroes resulted in a complete and even scandalous failure. It not only failed in the opinion of the world at large, but even in that of most if not all its supporters, and finally had to be abandoned; so that in all those dozen states where most of the laborers and many of the farmers to the number of about two millions of voters are negroes, they have been for the last forty years and upwards excluded from the polls. For the ten years, however, from 1866 to 1876, which was the period of the manhood suffrage experiment, they were permitted and urged to vote, under the protection of the Federal Government. At the close of the Civil War in 1865, when the conquered Southern States had undertaken to establish state governments on the basis of white suffrage, Congress and the Federal Government had interposed the strong arm and required negroes to be included in the electorate; thus making pure manhood suffrage the foundation of the new state governments. In so doing the Federal Government was logically right, upon any and all of the manhood suffrage theories. On none of them can the negro vote be properly rejected. The southern negroes were natives of the soil, free, self-supporting, and intensely loyal to the government. Whether you adopt the theory of a natural right to vote, or that the ballot is a weapon of defence for the poor, or that it is an educative force, or that the desires of all classes should be represented in the vote, the negroes’ claim to the franchise was and is well made out.