First came the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency on the death of President Lincoln. Bright hopes arose. Lincoln was too mild; but the stalwart war-Governor of Tennessee, the unflinching Union man, the Moses of the colored people, as he styled himself, he would do what Lincoln’s amiability would have left undone. What a Providential ordering it was; the silver lining on the black cloud of the assassination. But alas, how soon the change! This Moses led the colored people not to Canaan, but delivered them over to the murderous bands of the Ku Klux; and the North, who again found the whole affair lying at loose ends, was very much discouraged. Then General Grant was elected, and hope again sprang up. The soldier-President would take care of the Freedmen. He did; but the troops stationed at the State houses of Columbia and New Orleans became at length an intolerable vexation to the South and an utter weariness to the again discouraged North. President Hayes brought again “the era of good feeling.” The troops were removed. There was a time of quiet for the colored people. Wade Hampton and Lamar pledged the reciprocal good will of the South. I believe that these leaders were sincere, but they little understood the import of their pledge, or the mighty power that slumbered in the elements beneath their feet, “We now witness the upheaval of that power, the sweeping away of those pledges like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, the crushing again of the Negro, his relief by flight to Kansas, and the symbols of Southern methods and purposes revealed in the Chisholm murder and the Yazoo tragedy.”