victory and his prudence in the troubled times that followed. Of manly simplicity and solid worth, sagacious and successful wherever he had been tried, he seemed at once an embodiment of past victory and an assurance of future safety. Of the thirty-four States that voted, all but eight were for Grant and Colfax. Seymour had New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Oregon, Georgia, and Louisiana. The popular vote was 3,012,000 for Grant and Colfax to 2,703,000 for Seymour and Blair. The Republican convention had shirked the question of negro suffrage at the North by referring it to the individual States. Its refusal in many of the Northern States was felt as a discredit after it had been enforced throughout the South. The Republicans in Congress took courage from the election. The Fifteenth Amendment, forbidding the States to deny the right to vote "on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude," was brought forward in Congress in December, and passed February 28, 1869. It was ratified in rapid succession by thirty States out of thirty-seven,--Tennessee not acting, and negative votes being given by California, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon,--and proclaimed as adopted, March 30, 1870. With Grant's election, and the last touches of reconstruction sure to follow close, the North, as it were, drew a deep breath of relief. It felt that the fundamental issues were settled. The war had preserved the Union and destroyed slavery. The consummation had been fitly rounded out by the changes in the Constitution. The Southern States were restored to their places. Vast tides of material advance were setting in. New questions were rising, new ideas were fermenting. Good-bye to the past,--so felt the North,--to its injustice and its strife. As the nation's chieftain had said, in accepting the call to the nation's Presidency, "Let us have peace." CHAPTER XXXIII RECONSTRUCTION: THE WORKING OUT