helpless the freed people were; how ignorant, how easily led by
unscrupulous adventurers _pretending to be friends_ and how easily
murdered and overawed by veterans inured to the dangers and the toils
of war; and, lastly, they show how powerless was the national
government to protect its citizens' rights, specifically defined by
the Federal constitution. _Was_, do I say? It is as powerless to day!

In this brief review, then, of the history and present political
condition of the American Negro I cannot omit, though I shall not
detail, the horrors of the Ku Klux period. They are a link in the
chain: and though today's links are different in form and guise, _the
chain is the same_. Let the reader, then, be a little patient at being
reminded of things which he has perhaps forgotten.




CHAPTER VIII

_The Nation Surrenders_


The mind sickens in contemplating the mistakes of the "Reconstruction
policy;" and the revolting peculation and crime--which went hand in
hand from 1867-8 to 1876, bankrupting and terrorizing those
unfortunate States--plunging them into all but anarchy, pure and
simple.

A parallel to the terror which walked abroad in the South from 1866,
down to 1876, and which is largely dominant in that section even unto