The opposition to universal Negro suffrage was so great throughout the North during the agitation of the question which was subsequently embodied in the Fifteenth Amendment, that, excluding the enforced acquiescence of the Southern States, it was when submitted to the people defeated in every State except Iowa and Minnesota.[52] After the adoption of the Amendment other States voted for it. It is probable that, had the South not been so intractable in matters relating to the Negroes, the admission of the Negroes to the suffrage would have been along the line suggested by Mr. Lincoln to Governor Hahn. But at that time it was deemed necessary to quell the South though the heavens fell. Moreover, there was grave danger that the South might again hold the balance of power in the National Assembly. With stern and reckless determination the implacable leaders of the radical wing of the dominant party created what one of them termed a force of “perpetual allies.” Having been drilled by years of slavery to follow the lead of their masters, and being reasonably apt at imitation, these allies followed slavishly the direction of their new leaders. It was perfectly natural that they should at that time have given themselves unreservedly to the representatives of the agencies which had emancipated them, which stood for them, and which held out to them such glittering rewards as complete equality with, and finally domination over, their former masters. Possibly, it was not unnatural that they should have followed with unexampled credulity the most unprincipled among those representatives who steadily held out to them greater and greater rewards. However it was, this was the history of the exercise of the suffrage. With the weapon of the ballot, the Negro soon exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine advocate of Negro suffrage. Only the supreme constancy of the Southern whites saved the Southern States. From this beginning, every question became a race question, until to-day no question can arise which is not regarded by the Negroes generally from a racial standpoint. It may be asserted that this was quite natural. But the fact that it is so is the best argument for the Southern view. It is a somewhat curious if not pertinent fact that in the place where Negro suffrage was first established by Act of Congress, the District of Columbia (where it was established by the Act of January 8, 1867), which has always been under the direct control of National Government, subsequent conditions became so insupportable that it was deemed necessary to do away with the ballot altogether.