The holocaust of war, the
terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the
disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of
friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new
watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew,
however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty
demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the
Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he
had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded
as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with
which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not
votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes
enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a
power that had done all this? A million black men started
with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. So
the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876 came, and left
the half-free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly
but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began
gradually to replace the dream of political power,--a pow-
erful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided,
another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day.
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