The astute politicians of the South saw at once the insane folly
of this project. They knew that the system adapted to New England,
the mainspring of Western prosperity, the safeguard of intelligence
and freedom at the North, could not be adapted to the social and
political elements of the South. They knew that the South had grown
up a peculiar people; that for its government, in the changed state
of affairs, must be devised a new and untried system of political
organization, assimilated in every possible respect to the institutions
which had formerly existed. It is true, those institutions and
that form of government had been designed especially to promote and
protect the interests of slavery and the power of caste. But they
believed that the mere fact of emancipation did not at all change
the necessary and essential relations between the various classes
of her population, so far as her future development and prosperity
were concerned.
Therefore, immediately upon the "redemption" of these states from
the enforced and sporadic political ideas of the reconstruction
era, they set themselves earnestly at work to root out and destroy
all the pernicious elements of the township system, and to restore
that organization by which the South had formerly achieved power
and control in the national councils, had suppressed free thought
and free speech, had degraded labor, encouraged ignorance,
and established aristocracy.
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