hich made impossible any further effort to treat the
race problem with due consideration to actual local conditions.

Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit
to both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally
good. The institution was based upon the assumption that the Negro
race must be protected from the white race. In its organization and
administration it was an impossible combination of the practical and
the theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of common sense and
idealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence because
its lesser agents were not held to strict accountability by their
superiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races began, and
the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long and
troubled future.

CHAPTER V. THE VICTORY OF THE RADICALS

The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had
been at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient
strength to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction
of the Southern states. At the end of the war, a majority of the
Northern people would have supported a settlement in accordance with
Lincoln's policy. Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one,
would have supported Johnson's work had it been possible to secure a
popular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain the victory over
the conservatives? The answer to this question is given by James Ford
Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for the
Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his
obstinacy and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and
parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided
humanitarianism." The President stood alone in his responsibility,
but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a resolute band of
radicals.

Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson.
Lincoln had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he
possessed the faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson's
conduct usually multiplied the number and the strength of his enemies.
At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's policy in regard to slavery,
and after the Emancipation Proclamation they shifted their attack to his
"ten percent" plan for organizing the state governments as outlined in
the Proclamation of December 1863. Lincol