In the political reconstruction the negro was given the ballot without
any requirements of education or property.  This was partly a measure of
party balance of power; and partly from a concern that the negro would
not be secure in his rights as a citizen without it, and also upon the
theory that the ballot is an educating influence. 

This sudden transition and shifting of power was resented at the South,
resisted at first, and finally it has generally been evaded.  This was
due to a variety of reasons or prejudices, not all of them creditable to
a generous desire for the universal elevation of mankind, but one of them
the historian will judge adequate to produce the result.  Indeed, it
might have been foreseen from the beginning.  This reconstruction measure
was an attempt to put the superior part of the community under the
control of the inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of
race, and by traditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on
the other.  I venture to say that it was an experiment that would have
failed in any community in the United States, whether it was presented as
a piece of philanthropy or of punishment. 

A necessary sequence to the enfranchisement of the negro was his