In writing what is to be found in these pages, the author has made no effort to draw upon the imagination, nor to gratify the wishes of those whose chief ambition is to magnify the faults and deficiencies in some and to extol the good and commendable traits and qualities in others.

In other words, his chief purpose has been to furnish the readers and students of the present generation with a true, candid and impartial statement of material and important facts based upon his own personal knowledge and experience, with such comments as in his judgment the occasion and circumstances warranted.
Was the enfranchisement of the black men at the South by act of Congress a grave mistake?
Were the reconstructed State Governments that were organized as a result thereof a disappointment and a failure?
Was the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution premature and unwise?
An affirmative answer to the above questions will be found in nearly everything that has been written about Reconstruction during the last quarter of a century.

The main purpose of this work is to present the other side; but, in doing so, the author indulges the hope that those who may read these chapters will find that no extravagant and exaggerated statements have been made, and that there has been no effort to conceal, excuse, or justify any act that was questionable or wrong.

It will be seen that the primary object the author has sought to accomplish, is to bring to public notice those things that were commendable and meritorious, to prevent the publication of which seems to have been the primary purpose of nearly all who have thus far written upon that important subject.
But again, the question may be asked, if the reconstructed State Governments that were organized and brought into existence under the Congressional Plan of Reconstruction were not a disappointment and a failure, why is it that they could not and did not stand the test of time?
The author hopes and believes that the reader will find in one of the chapters of this book a complete and satisfactory answer to that question.
It will be seen that the State of Mississippi is made the pivotal one in the presentation of the facts and historical points touched upon in this work; but that is because Mississippi was the field of the author's political activities.

That State, however, was largely typical, hence what was true of that one was, in the main, true of all the other reconstructed States.
The author was a member of Congress during the settlement of the controversy between Hayes and Tilden for the Presidency of the United States, resulting from the close and doubtful election of 1876,--a controversy that was finally decided through the medium of the Electoral Commission.