Excerpt from Documentary History of Reconstruction, Vol. 1: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational Industrial, 1865 to the Present Time This public opinion which made possible the Reconstrue tion and its undoing, is, however, here reflected in the laws and political platforms. Illustrations of it can easily be found in the files of the leading newspapers of the North, such as the Tribune, and the Nation, which are more accessible even in Southern libraries than the files of important Southern journals. So this field has been somewhat neglected in order to develop others quite as important and more difficult of access. And it may be objected that the Radical side is given space out of pro portion to its merits. This is due to the fact that most of the official documents and collections of testimony are of Radical origin and have been better preserved than the Conservative material, much of which has been lost and destroyed or is still inaccessible. All who have done work in Southern history know of the exasperating ditfi culties that still lie in the way of the use of documents which are in the hands of private individuals. Conse quently, the history of the Conservative element must in many cases be developed from unfriendly sources, or from documents that have degenerated through careless or unfriendly use. While the bias of the documents in the first volume is toward the Radical, the reverse is true in the second volume. The dates given in the introductory note at the head of each document indicate the period covered by the document and also the date of origin of the present form of the document. Often the dates are the same. The difference between the two is in some degree a measure of the deterioration of the document. An examination of the contents of the first volume will show that the origin of the various documents and ex tracts is about as follows: State laws, 25; federal laws, 17; accounts of Northern men, 148; of Southern men (ex-confederate), 62; of Southern Unionist and Radical. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.