In that year the two irreconcilable governments grappled in a final struggle at the polls for mastery and possession of that section. When the smoke of battle cleared over South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the Southern forces of re-action were in complete possession of those states, and the solid South had become an accomplished fact. Nothing stood now between the blacks and their ancient enemy. They were again at the mercy of the old master class, who returned promptly to the execution of their interrupted program of inequality and injustice. As the whites could not now reestablish constitutionally their old slave system, or directly their new serf system they proceeded to do the next best thing, that is to construct a caste system based on race and color. Such a system, once firmly established, would fix the status of the blacks as a permanently inferior caste, and to that extent would render nugatory the three great amendments to the constitution. For members of an inferior caste would by the force of circumstances, law, or no law, be deprived of certain rights civil and political enjoyed by members of the superior caste. Citizenship of the one caste would not mean the same thing as citizenship of the other. The lower caste could not possibly possess the same rights--constitution or no constitution--which the upper caste possessed. Inequality became thus the chief corner stone of the new Southern edifice. Under this society there grew up two moral standards and two legal standards for the government of the races. For example what under such a system is bad for a black man to do to a member of the white race might not be regarded as bad at all if done by a white man to a member of the black race. The cruel and iniquitous sex relations of the races in the South has grown out of this caste system. Under it we have the double moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that section with a vengeance. A white man cannot with impunity seduce another white man's daughter or wife in the South. But were he to seduce a colored man's daughter or wife the case would be wholly different. No bastardy process lies in favor of the colored girl as lies in favor of her white sister under like circumstances, and no maintenance could she possibly obtain for her child from the white man who wronged her. Intermarriage between the races has been made illegal by every Southern state and by some Northern states also. Such a law makes colored women the safe quarry of white men, and nowhere in the South do law or public opinion impose upon them any deterrent punishment, moral or legal, for their crime, but quite the opposite. For such men do not lose standing in Southern society or the church or the state in consequence of their sin. In all this sexual inequality and iniquity the South has eyes but sees not and ears but hears not what is taking place everywhere in its midst.