commander and a local board for every county and large town. Each board
consisted of three members--all radicals--who were required to subscribe to
the "ironclad" oath. In several states one Negro was appointed to each local
board. The registrars listed Negro voters during the day, and at night worked
at the organization of a radical Republican party. The prospective voters were
required to take the oath prescribed in the Reconstruction Act, but the
registrars were empowered to go behind the oath and investigate the
Confederate record of each applicant. This authority was invoked to carry the
disfranchisement of the whites far beyond the intention of the law in an
attempt to destroy the leadership of the whites and to register enough Negroes
to outvote them at the polls. For this purpose the registration was continued
until October 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education and organization
carried on.

At the close of the registration, 703,000 black voters were on the rolls and
627,000 whites. In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and
Mississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States the blacks
and the radical whites together formed majorities. The white minorities
included several thousand who had been rejected by the registrars but restored
by the military commanders. Though large numbers of blacks were dropped from
the revised rolls as fraudulently registered, the registration statistics,
nevertheless, bore clear witness to the political purpose of those who
compiled them.

Next followed a vote on the question of holding a state convention and the
election of delegates to such a convention if held--a double election. The
whites, who had been harassed in the registration and who feared race
conflicts at the elections, considered whether they ought not to abstain from
voting. By staying away from the polls, they might bring the vote cast in each
State below a majority and thus defeat the proposed conventions for, unless a