wishes of Russia who was understood to have been well-disposed toward
the United States during the war. Under the operation of these forces
the Senate changed its attitude and ratified the treaty on April 9,
1867. By this act the United States came into possession of an area
measuring nearly 600,000 square miles, and stores of fish, furs, timber,
coal and precious metals whose size is even yet little understood.

It was not long before it became apparent that radical reconstruction
had been founded too little upon the hard facts of social and political
conditions in the South, and too much upon benevolent but mistaken
theories, and upon prejudices, partisanship and emotion. It was
inevitable that there should be an aftermath.

At the close of reconstruction in 1871, the southern negro was a citizen
of civil and political importance. As a voter, he was on an equality
with the whites; he belonged to the Republican party and his party was a
powerful factor in the politics of the South; his position was secured,
or at least seemed to be secured, by amendments to the federal
Constitution. Legally and constitutionally his position appeared to be
impregnable. In the minds of the southern white, however, the amendments
vied with military reconstruction in their injustice and unwisdom. To
his mind they constituted an attempt to abolish the belief of the white
man in the essential inferiority of the black, to make the pyramid of
government stand on its apex, and to place the very issues of existence
within the power of the congenitally unfit. To the discontent aroused by
war were added political and racial antagonism, which blazed at times
into fury. The southern whites began to invent methods for overcoming
the power of the freedmen in politics and for insuring themselves
against possible danger of violence at the hands of the blacks.