In any contest between the North and the
South, they would take, to a man, the Southern side. After the
taunts of the women, the captured soldiers of the Union found,
until nearly the last year of the war, nothing harder to bear,
when marched as prisoners into Richmond, than the antics and
hootings of the negroes. Negro suffrage on the score of loyalty,
is at best a matter of indifference to the Union, and as the
elective franchise is not a natural right, but a civil trust, the
friends of the negro should, for the present, be contented with
securing him simply equal rights of person and property.
CHAPTER XIV.
POLITICAL TENDENCIES.
The most marked political tendency of the American people has
been, since 1825, to interpret their government as a pure and
simple democracy, and to shift it from a territorial to a purely
popular basis, or from the people as the state, inseparably
united to the national territory or domain, to the people as
simply population, either as individuals or as the race. Their
tendency has unconsciously, therefore, been to change their
constitution from a republican to a despotic, or from a civilized
to a barbaric constitution.
The American constitution is democratic, in the sense that the
people are sovereign that all laws and public acts run in their
name; that the rulers are elected by them, and are responsible to
them; but they are the people territorially constituted and fixed
to the soil, constituting what Mr.
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