The Southern people cannot be justly blamed for their resolute resistance to negro domination. It was too much to expect that former masters should accept political inferiority to a race emancipated from slavery, but not emancipated from deplorable ignorance and debasement, and easily misled by unscrupulous whites. On the other hand, gratitude and prudence demanded, on the part of the North, that the negro should not only be a freeman, but also a citizen; that he should not only be liberated from slavery, but also protected against oppression. The negro, however ignorant, was true to the Union, and attached to the Republican party; the black soldiers had fought in the Union armies, and Abraham Lincoln himself had advised Governor Hahn, of Louisiana, in 1863, that "the very intelligent colored people, and especially those who fought gallantly in our ranks, should be admitted to the franchise," for "they would probably help in some trying time to come to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom." Andrew Johnson, succeeding to the chair of Lincoln, and with his heart softened toward his native South, would have restored the whites to full control, with the negroes at their mercy. The Congress, however, intervened, and the ex-Confederate States were placed under military law, and only admitted to recognition as States upon conditions which gave the negro equal rights with his white fellow-citizens--and indeed superior rights to many of them, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States excluding from office all persons who, having taken an oath as public officers to support the Constitution afterward joined the Confederacy. For opposing these measures of Congress President Johnson was impeached, and escaped conviction by one vote. * * * The Southern whites continued to struggle for white supremacy. The conflict continued throughout Johnson's term as President, and even the severe military measures adopted under power from Congress by General Grant, only suppressed organized violence in its more rampant form. It was impossible to imprison a commonwealth or to place bayonets at every threshold, and while the negro might be upheld in his right of suffrage, Federal protection could not supply him with work and bread. The intellect and the property of the South were on the side of the whites, and the blacks began to find that their choice was between submission or extinction. In the North, even among Republicans, a feeling grew that the ex-Confederates had suffered enough, while it was impossible for an honest man to have any other sentiment than contempt for the political vultures who had descended on the wasted South. This feeling gave strength to the Liberal Republican movement in 1872, and arrayed Democrats--and not a few of the old anti-slavery leaders--in support of Horace Greeley for President.