The purpose of this monograph is to show the bad effects of Negro suffrage which had no place in Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction or in the early Congressional plan, but was forced upon the South by a group of aggressive radicals led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner as a means of their personal aggrandizement and of executing punishment and revenge upon the Southern States. It is not true that these two statesmen desired to force Negro rule upon the South. They tried to give that section a democratic government. At first they advised the Negroes to choose for their leaders the intelligent southern whites and the Negroes entreated their former masters to serve them in this capacity. When the whites refused to cooeperate, therefore, Congress could do nothing else but make the Negroes the basis of the reconstructed governments. From this partisan point of view only then the monograph is very much of a success. The writer suffered from a preoccupation of mind and in his researches was governed accordingly. He knew what he wanted to write and found facts to assist him toward this end. The book covers in detail form the beginnings of Negro suffrage in Virginia, the campaign of 1867 in which radicals and Negroes drew the color line, the constitutional convention of 1867-68, the committee of nine, the campaign of 1869, the restoration of Virginia, the elimination of the Carpetbaggers from 1869 to 1879, the Readjuster movement in Virginia from 1879 to 1883, politics and race friction from 1885 to 1900, the constitutional convention of 1901-1902, and the new constitution. He, therefore, discusses certain topics already treated in J.A.C. Chandler's _Representation in Virginia_, and _The History of Suffrage in Virginia_; J.P. McConnell's _Negroes and their Treatment in Virginia from 1865-1867_; H.J. Eckenrode's _The Political History of Virginia during Reconstruction_; and C.C. Pearson's _The Readjuster Movement in Virginia_. The author makes a survey of the situation prior to the Civil War, explaining why the aristocratic Virginians long since accustomed to rule even by excluding the poor whites from the electorate could not tolerate the enfranchisement of the Negroes. An effort is made also to show that inasmuch as most of the Northern States prior to the Civil War had not accepted Negro suffrage, it was natural for the southern people to be opposed to such a policy. To strengthen this point he refers to such authorities as Oliver P. Morton, Governor Andrew and Abraham Lincoln.