A respectable element among the white Republicans of the South have given it up. One of the most distinguished and thoughtful Northern men in the country, a life-long Republican, a man of approved Republicanism, declared before the leading Republican club of the country not long ago, that the “experiment entered on with so much enthusiasm” had undoubtedly proved a failure. Looking back on this period, it is impossible for the open-minded student not to see that whatever the motive, the result was, as Mr. Root declared before the Union League Club, a miserable failure, disastrous to both races. The South was devastated and humiliated beyond belief; the Negroes were hopelessly misled in matters where right direction was vitally necessary to their permanent progress. And the consequence was a riot of civic debauchery which must bring shame to every honest man of the African race and will always prove a bar to the possibility of Negro domination hereafter.[50] Whether it be recognized as yet or not, the whole country owes a debt to the Southern people who withstood to the end the policy of the misguided fanatics and politicians who would have put the South permanently under Negro domination. But for the resolution and constancy of the Southern whites, one-sixth of the then existing States of the Union would have become Negroized and we should possibly have had by this time several States of the Union substantially what Santo Domingo is to-day. As the realization is becoming more common that the “experiment” which was entered on with so much enthusiasm a generation ago, of arming the Negro with “the weapon” of the ballot, has proved a disastrous failure, it is also gradually being recognized that the kind of education on which so much money, both from public taxation and from private philanthropy, has been lavished, and so much care has been expended, has not only failed to bring about the results which had been expected, but has, so far as the great body of the race is concerned, proved an absolute failure. The Negroes at large and the doctrinaires will not accept this, but nevertheless it is recognized by those who know the Negro best and have sufficient breadth of knowledge to look at things as they are. The sanest and most broad-minded among the Negro leaders of to-day has recognized it, and the foundation of his success is his recognition of it—the recognition of it by him and the recognition of it by the whites of the South, who have, because of it, sustained him by their sympathy and their aid. It is because of this that Booker T. Washington has become the best proof of what the Negro race at its best may produce, and is the most unanswerable argument adduced since the war of the value of Negro education.