as if to paralyze and destroy any effort that might be made to adjust conditions so that a permanent peace and prosperity and happiness might follow, fell assassination came and struck down the great emancipator—the man best prepared to guide the ship of state through such difficulties and dangers.

It is easy enough for the men of our time to criticise, to find fault with and to underrate the efforts of the statesmen of forty years ago who devised the plan for the reconstruction of the states which had been in rebellion. But when one considers the intrinsic difficulties of the situation, he cannot but be impressed with the patriotism, the justice and the earnestness of purpose of such men as Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens and Oliver P. Morton. The splendid legislation which their giant intellects matured and their indefatigable efforts helped to enact is the best evidence of their power of perception, foresight and judgment. The whole country owes a debt of gratitude to the superb statesmanship of these men, but the Negro race is preeminently the beneficiary of their mighty thoughts and prodigious labors. For out of the conflicts of purposes and plans for rebuilding a shattered nation, there were evolved with their aid the three great war amendments, guaranteeing to the Negro freedom, citizenship and the elective franchise. To weave into the organic law these marks of manhood for the black man was a fit return of a grateful country for the support he had given it in time of its distress. He had protected the government with the bayonet, it was right he should be granted the privilege of serving it with the ballot.

The 13th amendment legally abolished slavery, and, strange as it may seem, this provision of the organic law, brought the word “slavery” into the constitution for the first time. The 14th amendment prescribed citizenship for the Negro, and the 15th amendment put into his hands the ballot as a weapon of defense against those who were cruelly persecuting him. For it is a part of the history of the period immediately following the Civil War that “Black codes” were enacted in some of the southern states, so awful in their effect that the poor freedmen were reduced to a condition not far removed from slavery itself.

None but those who can recall these days of terror can fully appreciate what the elective franchise did for the Negro at that time. Under the circumstances, freedom for him without the ballot would have been the merest mockery. The terrible persecutions inflicted upon loyal white men and upon Negroes determined Congress as Oliver P. Morton said, “in the last resort, and as the last 

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