The North, once and for all, settled that the matters which lay at the bottom of the Civil War should be settled in the manner which conform to Northern notions of justice and of expediency.  The abolition of slavery, and the final disposal of the alleged right to Secession, gave to the North, all the requisite securities against attacks on the unity of the Republic.  The Republicans, influenced in part by considerations of party, but partly (it must in fairness be admitted) by the feeling that it was a duty to secure for Negro citizens the full enjoyment of the civil and political rights given them, under the constitutional amendments supported for years the so-called Carpet Bag Governments, that is to say, the rule of Northern adventurers who were kept in office throughout the South by the Negro vote.  The Federal Government, in short, up to 1876 gave by its arms authority in the South to the unscrupulosity of Northern scoundrelism supported by the votes of Negro ignorance.  Such a policy naturally produced bitter irritation among the Southern Whites.  Its reversal as naturally restored to the Whites at once power and contentment.  Whether this reversal was as satisfactory to the Blacks is less clear.  In any case it is hard to see how the restoration of the Southern States to their natural place in the Union tells in favour of giving Ireland a position quite inconsistent with the existing constitution of the United Kingdom.  The case stands thus:  Northern Republicans insisted that every State in the South should submit to the supremacy of the United States on every point which directly or indirectly concerned the national and political unity of the American people.  Having secured this submission the Republican party restored to the Southern States the reality as well as the name of State rights; and allowed the same and no more than the same independence to South Carolina as is allowed to New York.  No doubt something was sacrificed; this “something” was a matter which did not greatly concern the citizens of the North.  It was the attempt to secure to the Black citizens of the South the political rights given them by the constitution.  The sacrifice may have been necessary; many of the wisest Americans hold that it was so.  But we may suspect that even amongst those who, as a matter of policy, approve the course pursued by the Federal Government in the South since 1876, qualms are occasionally felt as to some of its results.  The able writer who sets American Home Rule before Englishmen as an example for imitation says with the candour which marks his writings:  “I do not propose to defend or explain the way in which” the Native Whites “have since then” (1876) kept the Government “in their hands by suppressing or controlling the Negro vote.  This is not necessary to my purpose."[24] It is however necessary for the purpose of weighing the effect of American experience to bear this “suppression” constantly in mind; it has deprived the Negroes of