e thus advised by Thaddeus Stevens and
Charles Sumner, who showed foresight in trying to secure the
cooperation of the best white element in the South.[6] These
statesmen, however, are generally slandered by uninformed writers who
contend that Sumner and Stevens did not thus proceed. The Negroes not
only sought the leadership of the whites but showed unusual humaneness
toward their poverty-stricken former masters by passing, as they did
in South Carolina, stay laws to postpone the payment of their many war
debts secured by mortgages on their property.

Statistics show, moreover, that with the exception of South Carolina
and Mississippi, no State and not even any department of a State
government was ever dominated altogether by Negroes. The Negroes never
wanted and never had complete control in the Southern States.[7] The
most important offices were generally held by white men. Only two
Negroes ever served in the United States Senate, Hiram R. Revells and
B. K. Bruce; and only twenty ever became Representatives in the House:
and all of these did not serve at the same time, although some of them
were elected for more than one term.

The charge that the men who were elected to office by the Negroes were
always of the most debased and degenerate type is untrue. Because of
the refusal of the southern aristocracy to cooperate with them,
however, the Negroes were forced to elect such men as they were able
to secure. Numerous promising and respectable whites who were elected
to office by the Negroes, became corrupt and unprincipled on account
of the treatment tendered them by the aristocratic whites. From among
the Negroes themselves, the very best men available were chosen to
hold offices. Among these were former slaves who had been made
trustworthy servants of their masters and free Negroes who had
received some education. Some of these Negroes served in their
official capacity with honor and credit. A number of them were also
respected by certain fairminded southern whites.[8]

Numerous examples of the high regard which the whites of certain
communities had for the Negro leaders can be cited. Samuel J. Lee, of
Charleston, South Carolina, was considered by his white contemporaries
as one of the best criminal lawyers which the State had produced. At
his death all local courts were declared adjourned and the entire city
paid him homage. The late Bishop Isaac Clinton served, as Treasurer of
Orangeburg, South Carolina, for eig