them with their own appointees, to compel order by means of the
soldiery, to set aside court decrees and even to close the courts and
to enact legislation. In the meanwhile a total of 703,000 black and
627,000 white voters were registered, delegates to constitutional
conventions were elected, constitutions were drawn up and adopted which
permitted negro suffrage, and state officers and legislators elected.
In conformity with the provisions of the Act, the newly chosen
legislatures ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
sent representatives and senators to Washington, where they were
admitted to Congress, and by 1871 the last confederate state was
reconstructed.

The commanding generals were honest and efficient, in the main, even if
their stern rule was distasteful to the South, but the regime of the
newly elected state officers and legislators was a period of dishonesty
and incapacity. Most of the experienced and influential whites had been
excluded from participation in politics through the operation of the
presidential proclamations and the reconstruction acts. In all the
legislatures there were large numbers of blacks--sometimes, indeed, they
were in the majority. Two parties appeared. The radical or Republican
group included the negroes, a few southern whites, commonly called
"scalawags," and various northerners known as "carpet-baggers." These
last were in some cases mere adventurers and in others men of ability
who were attracted to the South for one reason or another, and took
a prominent part in political affairs. The old-time whites held both
kinds in equal detestation. The other party was called conservative or
Democratic, and was composed of the great mass of the whites. Many of
them had been Whigs before the war, but in the face of negro-Republican
domination, nearly all threw in their lot with the conservatives.