[Sidenote: Negro rule in the South from the point of view of political science and ethnical principle.] From the point of view of a sound political science the imposition of universal negro suffrage upon the {245} Southern communities, in some of which the negroes were in large majority, was one of the "blunder-crimes" of the century. There is something natural in the subordination of an inferior race to a superior race, even to the point of the enslavement of the inferior race, but there is nothing natural in the opposite. It is entirely unnatural, ruinous, and utterly demoralizing and barbarizing to both races. It is difficult to believe that the creation of such a relation between the blacks and whites of the South was at all within the intentions of the framers of the Reconstruction Acts. They were irritated because these communities would not accord civil equality to the freedmen, would not accept the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, and had passed acts which created a new species of slavery or quasi-slavery of the blacks. They thought they were placed between the alternative of continuing military government in the South indefinitely, or giving the negro the political power with which to maintain his civil rights. Opposition to military government in time of peace was an ingrained principle of the American people, and there was a large part of people of the North, nearly all adhering to the Republican party, who believed that manhood suffrage was the true principle of a sound political science. And it was thought that the only way of creating "States" in the South which would sustain the Republican party was by giving the negro the suffrage. It is not surprising, then, that they adopted the course which they did. There was a third alternative, as has already been pointed out, viz., the placing of these communities under Territorial civil government and keeping them there until the spirit of loyalty to the Nation was established and the principle and practice of civil equality among all citizens was made thoroughly secure. {246} But, as has been said, the idea that these communities were "States" of the Union, notwithstanding their rebellion against the United States and their attempted secession from the Union, seemed to prohibit the following of this course, the only true and sound course. And so these unhappy communities were given over, as sham "States" of the Union, to the rule of the ignorant and vicious part of their population, to be sustained therein by the military power of the Nation, under the excuse that that part alone was loyal.