The example of how the South might have met the situation was afforded by no less a man than Robert E. Lee, about whose unselfishness and standard of conduct as a gentleman there could be no question.  One day in Richmond a Negro from the street, intent on asserting his rights, entered a representative church, pushed his way to the communion altar and knelt.  The congregation paused, and all fully realized the factors that entered into the situation.  Then General Lee rose and knelt beside the Negro; the congregation did likewise, and the tension was over.  Furthermore, every one went home spiritually uplifted.

Could the handling of this incident have been multipled a thousand times—­could men have realized that mere accidents are fleeting but that principles are eternal—­both races would have been spared years of agony, and our Southland would be a far different place to-day.  The Negro was at the heart of the problem, but to that problem the South undoubtedly held the key.  Of course the cry of “social equality” might have been raised; anything might have been said to keep the right thing from being done.  In this instance, as in many others, the final question was not what somebody else did, but how one himself could act most nobly.

Unfortunately Lee’s method of approach was not to prevail.  Passion and prejudice and demagoguery were to have their day, and conservative and broadly patriotic men were to be made to follow leaders whom they could not possibly approve.  Sixty years afterwards we still suffer from the KuKlux solution of the problem.

2. Meeting the Problem

The story of reconstruction has been many times told, and it is not our intention to tell that story again.  We must content ourselves by touching upon some of the salient points in the discussion.

Even before the close of the war the National Government had undertaken to handle officially the thousands of Negroes who had crowded to the Federal lines and not less than a million of whom were in the spring of 1865 dependent upon the National Government for support.  The Bureau of Refugee Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, created in connection with the War Department by an act of March 3, 1865, was to remain in existence throughout the war and for one year thereafter.  Its powers were enlarged July 16, 1866, and its chief work did not end until January 1, 1869, its educational work continuing for a year and a half longer.  The Freedmen’s Bureau was to have “the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen.”  Of special importance was the provision in the creating act that gave the freedmen to understand that each male refugee was to be given forty acres with the guarantee of possession for three years.  Throughout the existence of the Bureau its chief commissioner was General O.O.  Howard.  While the principal officers were undoubtedly men