of the
black codes. Many northern men led by Sumner and Stevens, who at first
tried to secure the cooperation of the best whites, became indignant
because of this attitude of the South and were reduced to the
necessity of forcing Negro suffrage upon the South at the point of the
bayonet, believing that the only way to insure the future welfare of
the Negro was to safeguard it by giving him the ballot. Under the
protection of these military governments, the Negroes and certain more
or less fortunate whites gained political control. The southern white
men, weary and disgusted because of the outcome of their attempts at
secession, maintained an attitude of sullenness and indifference
toward the new regime and accordingly offered at first very little
opposition to the Negro control of politics. The Negroes, upon their
securing the right of suffrage, however, turned at once to their
former masters for political leadership,[2] but the majority of these
southern gentlemen refused to "lower their dignity" by political
association with the Negroes. The few southern gentlemen who did
affiliate with the Negroes were dubbed "scalawags" by their former
friends and cast out of southern society.

The Negroes were then forced, because of the lack of cooperation on
the part of the southern whites, to accept the leadership of certain
northern men who came South for the sole purpose of personal gain and
exploitation. These men were in some cases of an extremely low order
and were in a large measure responsible for the corruption of
Reconstruction days. They were contemptuously called "carpetbaggers"
by the southern whites because they were so poor that they could carry
all of their possessions in a carpet bag. Some of these white men were
conscientious, however, and served these States honorably. Most
Negroes, therefore, were under the leadership of these three elements:
southern men who were regarded by their neighbors as men of the lowest
possible order, unscrupulous adventurers from the North, and some
intelligent members of their own race like B. K. Bruce, John R. Lynch,
R. B. Elliot, and John M. Langston. This ill-assorted group of
politicians reconstructed the Southern States.

The wisdom of this policy has been widely questioned. From the point
of view of most white men studying Reconstruction history this effort
to make the Negro a factor in politics was a failure, the elimination
of the Negro from politics was just, and the ri