owever,
added something to the industrial and civic forces of the South. A
larger class were the teachers. Men and women by hundreds went to the
South, some sent by missionary organizations, some independently, to
organize schools and to teach the children of the freedmen. Many of them
were of the highest character, devoted, self-sacrificing, going to the
blacks simply because they supposed their need was greatest. But
Beecher's warning proved sound--because as a whole this movement took
the negroes as a distinct field, ignoring the needs of the whites, it
incurred odium as an alien and half-hostile work. The barbaric element
among the whites--and slavery had left a deep taint of barbarism--came
out at its worst in insults to the "nigger teachers," with occasional
burning of a school-house. The better social elements looked askance at
those whose presence was a reminder of conquest and humiliation.

From the business and the educational immigration, a few Northern men
were drawn into public affairs, less by choice than by necessity of the
situation. With these mingled a different class, men who had been
disreputable hangers-on of the army or the Freedmen's Bureau, or who had
come for the sole purpose of plunder. It was a very mixed company of
whites and blacks that made up the conventions and then filled the
legislative halls and the public offices. The constitutions were not
badly framed, except as they, for the most part, continued the exclusive
clauses. The general legislation was various in its character. There
were some excellent features, above all the institution in every State
of a genuine public school system, where before there had been only
makeshifts or make-believes. Some other good constructive work was done,
toward establishing society on the new basis. Certainly nothing was
enacted so bad as the "black codes" of a few years earlier, not to speak
of the legislation under slavery. There were some unsuccessful attempts
at engrafting institutions, like the township system, which had worked
well in their native soil but could not be created out of hand. In
general the white leadership of the dominant party averted much that
might have been expected from the ignorance of its legislators as a
mass. But plenty of waste and mischief was wrought. Place a crowd of
hungry and untaught men next the public treasury with the lid off, and
some results are sure. The men will not be safer guardians of the
treasure for hav