own relatives fought to free the negro slave; but none of them
fought to enslave their white brothers of the South by putting them
absolutely under negro government. And yet there is one possible
justification for that abominable reconstruction policy. It may have
averted a subsequent war which might have lasted not for four years,
but for forty years. Even if this be true, perhaps there is no
credit in the policy for any man who helped to enforce it, but you
will grant that there were two important results from those bitter
years of reconstruction:

"First, the negro learned with certainty at once and forever that he
was a free man.

"Second, he at once acquired a degree of independence effectually
preventing the development of a situation throughout the South, in
which the negro, though nominally free, would have remained
virtually a slave, a situation which, if once established, might
have required a subsequent war of many years for its complete
eradication. Even under the conditions which have prevailed, there
have been isolated instances of peonage in the southern states since
the war; and if the education and gradual enfranchisement of the
negro had been left wholly in the hands of their former masters,
from the immediate close of the war, I can conceive of conditions
under which slavery would essentially have been continued."

"Such a possibility is, of course, conceivable," said Mr. West, "and
we must all admit that there were some slave holders who would have
taken advantage of any such opportunity; but had Lincoln lived the
terms made would probably have been such that the South would have
felt in honor bound to enforce them. Probably the enfranchisement