Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not only just, but almost inevitable.  Lincoln, in 1864, “cautiously” suggested to Louisiana’s private consideration “whether some of the colored people may not be let in as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who fought gallantly in our ranks.  They would probably help in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom.”  Indeed, the “family of freedom” in Louisiana being somewhat small just then, who else was to be intrusted with the “jewel”?  Later and for different reasons Johnson, in 1865, wrote to Mississippi, “If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their name, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other states will follow.  This you can do with perfect safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states.  I hope and trust your convention will do this.”

The Negroes themselves began to ask for the suffrage.  The Georgia convention in Augusta (1866) advocated “a proposition to give those who could write and read well and possessed a certain property qualification the right of suffrage.”  The reply of the South to these suggestions was decisive.  In Tennessee alone was any action attempted that even suggested possible Negro suffrage in the future, and that failed.  In all other states the “Black Codes” adopted were certainly not reassuring to the friends of freedom.  To be sure, it was not a time to look for calm, cool, thoughtful action on the part of the white South.  Their economic condition was pitiable, their fear of Negro freedom genuine.  Yet it was reasonable to expect from them something less than repression and utter reaction toward slavery.  To some extent this expectation was fulfilled.  The abolition of slavery was recognized on the statute book, and the civil rights of owning property and appearing as a witness in cases in which he was a party were generally granted the Negro; yet with these in many cases went harsh and unbearable regulations which largely neutralized the concessions and certainly gave ground for an assumption that, once free, the South would virtually reenslave the Negro.  The colored people themselves naturally feared this, protesting, as in Mississippi, “against the reactionary policy prevailing and expressing the fear that the legislature will pass such prescriptive laws as will drive the freedmen from the state, or practically reenslave them.”

The codes spoke for themselves.  As Burgess says, “Almost every act, word, or gesture of the Negro, not consonant with good taste and good manners as well as good morals, was made a crime or misdemeanor for which he could first be fined by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition of almost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill."[100]