concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to
be carried to your cities and to your women and children. They planned one
universal bonfire of the North from Lake Ontario to the Missouri."

Among the lesser lights may be mentioned Morton and Wade, both bluff, coarse,
and ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican party had a
monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any means it must gain
and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre; and Benjamin Butler, a
charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western radicals were less troubled by
humanitarian ideals than were those of the East and sought more practical
political results.

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction which finally decided the fate of the
Southern states was composed of eight radicals, four moderate Republicans, and
three Democrats. As James Gillespie Blaine wrote later, "it was foreseen that
in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican party would be in the
keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen." This committee was divided
into four subcommittees to take testimony. The witnesses, all of whom were
examined at Washington, included army officers and Bureau agents who had
served in the South, Southern Unionists, a few politicians, and several former
Confederates, among them General Robert E. Lee and Alexander H. Stephens. Most
of the testimony was of the kind needed to support the contentions of the
radicals that Negroes were badly treated in the South; that the whites were
disloyal; that, should they be left in control, the Negro, free labor, the
nation, and the Republican party would be in danger; that the army and the
Freedmen's Bureau must be kept in the South; and that a radical reconstruction
was necessary. No serious effort, however, was made to ascertain the actual
conditions in the South. Slow to formulate a definite plan, the Joint
Committee guided public sentiment toward radicalism, converted gradually the
Republican Congressmen, and little by little undermined the power and