But now we have entered upon the third stage of this experiment. The solid South is broken, not by federal assaults, or through the ambition of carpet-baggers, but by native greed of power. The irrepressible conflict between the “ins” and the “outs” hurls to the ground the fabric which seemed to the South so fair and so strong. The hero of a hundred battles leads the ignorant negro to the polls, deluded by lies and false promises, displaces one-armed Confederates who had fought under him, to make room for a low grade of negro politicians, trails the honor of a once proud old commonwealth in the dust, and dissipates forever the fond delusion of a solid white South. We have had the negro placed in authority for a brief day by federal power; then by a certain reaction driven from the legislative hall, and in many cases from the ballot box, by the outraged white restored to power. Now we are to see him debauched and led to the polls by political demagogues, in a desperate and most demoralizing struggle for office. Which stage has been, or promises to be the worst? Concerning this there would doubtless be difference of opinion, according to the latitude of those who express it. To the Southern white, nothing could seem more terrible than exposure to the insult and burden of _negro_ legislation; not simply because it is ignorant, but chiefly because it is negro legislation. To the average citizen of the North, the stories told of wrongs and cruelties perpetrated by the Southerners in their efforts to deliver themselves from this, to them, intolerable degradation, have seldom been eclipsed in horror and utter fiendishness, and nothing could be worse than that a solid South be maintained. But to us who have been trying to grasp, in order that we may solve, the great problem involved in the negro’s relation to our national life, and the kingdom of our Lord, it seems evident that we are just beginning to get a glimpse of the danger we are called to face, and with which we must grapple. Hitherto we have chased the bear, and the chase has had its dangers; but now the bear has turned to chase us. We can no longer calmly discuss the question, “What shall we do with the negro?” but it becomes one of vital interest, “What will he do with us?” We have put a bludgeon into a giant’s hands, with which he will beat out our brains, unless we soothe and exorcise the devil that is in him.