Not by force, said the North; not by government guardianship, said the South; then by the ballot, the sole and legitimate defence of a free people, said the Common Sense of the Nation.
Du Bois outlines the differing post-Civil War proposals for protecting newly freed people, concluding that the ballot was widely seen as their essential defense.
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The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
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