Impelled by the motive of self preservation, by the sheer necessity of saving itself from those who would have destroyed it, and of saving to the freedmen the simple inherent right of self-ownership, the nation was forced to confer upon the Negro the right to vote by the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment. This step it is now popular to characterize as a blunder or as an act of revenge designed to humiliate the South. If it was, then the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery are nameless crimes. The period of Reconstruction has served as the text for discrediting Negro Suffrage and is always the apt illustration that gives point to the argument of those who attempt to prove the incapacity of the Negro to exercise the right of suffrage. There is no doubt that the effort to mould public sentiment away from Negro Suffrage has been generally successful and this success has been achieved very largely through misrepresentation in regard to the facts of Reconstruction. The great body of active citizens have grown into full citizenship since the Reconstruction epoch, are consequently ignorant of its true history and quite satisfied to receive the information concerning it from those whose interest and delight it is to resort to misrepresentation. It is not my purpose to enter into a defense of Reconstruction, but merely to call attention to the following facts: (1) The attempt to reconstruct the rebellious states along lines of Republican principles failed until the Negro was given the right to vote. Those who had participated in the War of the Rebellion and to whom the opportunity had been given to return to normal relations with the Federal Government without the interference of the Negro, failed signally and deliberately to do so in an acceptable manner. Negro Suffrage was therefore an essential and beneficent factor in the work of reconstruction.[8] (2) The accepted history of that period has been written by those who rode into power by murder and intimidation and to whose interest it is to paint the history of reconstruction so dark as to hide their own flagrant crimes. Their method of history writing has been that of suppression and distortion of facts. (3) The true history of that period reveals some things that place Negro Suffrage in a remarkably creditable light. The statement has recently been made that "the reconstruction regime in the South worked lasting injury to the colored race."[9] Place this statement in juxtaposition with a few of the things that were really done by these newly enfranchised people who were practicing their first lessons in the science of government. Judge Albion W. Tourgee has stated it thus: