In this book, Clark examines the role of the Union in the reconstruction of the Southern states following the Civil War. He argues that the federal government should have taken a more active role in ensuring that civil rights were protected and that the new state governments were truly representative of all citizens. Clark's ideas were ahead of their time, and this book continues to be relevant today. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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Excerpt from Commonwealth Reconstructed The justice of my representation will be the more readily disputed because there seems, just now, to be a lull in the storm of our political afflictions, which sanguine and superficial observers readily take for a lasting change in the weather. But, while I am ready to believe that the public business is more honestly conducted to-day in the majority of our capitols and city halls than it was in 1870, I can see no ground for ex pecting that the amelioration will be permanent. Particular enormities may never be repeated, but the species is the native and inevitable product of our present political system, and will multiply in number and variety till the defects of that system are corrected. Moreover, no improvement whatever appears in the competency of the men who are put in charge of the public interests. Nevertheless, the topic in the ensuing discussion where I have most failed to satisfy myself is this very matter of setting forth the existing state of public affairs. The sketch is not only scanty, but broken, unskilful and most incomplete. But I console myself with the reflection that, as no painter was ever yet able to spread upon the canvas the common brute land scape in all its variety of motion, form and color, so must literary art forever fail perfectly to portray the complex, ever changing and innumerable phenomena of political society. I comfort myself also with this, that intelligent readers will easily be able, by recollection and the conclusions of reasonable analogy, to fill out the picture. 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.