The “best” of the Republican Party had been its insistence on protecting the rights of the freedpeople, but Blaine had refused to make repression in the South a campaign issue. He did so only after he had lost. “The course of affairs in the South,” he declared, “has crushed out the political power of more than six million American citizens and has transferred by violence to others.” This was certainly true, but it was not the ground on which the Republicans had fought.80
