At
any rate (it is argued), the illiterate white is a totally different man
from the illiterate negro. How far such modifications of the State
constitutions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States,
is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. The
arguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with Amendments
XIV. and XV. of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingenious
than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is
reasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of them
put it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of the
negro over them," the flail has been laid aside long enough to permit
the South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and its
self-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as many
tragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair of its
ultimate solution.
Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning to the South;
agriculture has revived, and manufactures have increased. Social
intercourse and intermarriage have done much to promote mutual
comprehension between North and South, and to wipe out rankling
animosities. Each party has made a sincere effort to understand the
other's "case," and the war has come to seem a thing fated and
inevitable, or at any rate not to have been averted save by superhuman
wisdom and moderation on both sides.
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