desire to accept the situation.

There were no political parties at first, but material for several existed. If
things had been allowed to take their course, there would have arisen a normal
cleavage between former Whigs and Democrats, between the upcountry and the low
country, between the slaveholders and the nonslaveholders. The average white
man in these governments was willing to be fair to the Negro but was not
greatly concerned about his future. In the view of most white people, it was
the white man who was emancipated. The white districts had no desire to let
the power return to the Black Belt by giving the Negro the ballot, for the
vote of the Negroes, they believed, would be controlled by their former
masters.

Johnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the radicals had
failed to control him. He and they had little in common; they wished to uproot
a civilization, while he wished to punish individuals; they were not troubled
by constitutional scruples, while he was the strictest of State Rights
Democrats; they thought principally of the Negro and his potentialities, while
Johnson was thinking of the emancipated white man. It is possible that Lincoln
might have succeeded, but for Johnson the task proved too great.



CHAPTER IV. THE WARDS OF THE NATION

The Negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were they
citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern answer to
this question may be found in the so- called "Black Laws," which were enacted
by the state governments set up by President Johnson. The views of the
dominant North may be discerned in part in the organization and administration