d
States. The state legislature at once expelled the twenty-seven Negro
members, on the ground that the recent legislation and the state
constitution gave the Negroes the right to vote but not to hold office.
Congress, which had already admitted the Georgia representatives,
refused to receive the senators and turned the state back to military
control. In 1869-70, Georgia was again reconstructed after a drastic
purging of the legislature by the military commander, the reseating
of the Negro members, and the ratification of both the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments. The state was readmitted to representation in July
1870, after the failure of a strong effort to extend for two years the
carpetbag government of the state.

Upon the last states to pass under the radical yoke, heavier conditions
were imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required
to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions"
embraced, in addition to the prohibition against future change of the
suffrage, a requirement that the Negroes should never be deprived of
school and office-holding rights.

The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through
by able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South,
nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the
beginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poor
leadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of the
radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite program;
the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure the
supremacy in the South by the aid of the Negroes and exclusion of
whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarily
successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie between
military rule for an indefinite period and Negro suffrage; and since
most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try
Negro suffrage. But, after all, Negro suffrage had to be supported by
military rule, and in the end both failed completely.

CHAPTER VIII. THE UNION LEAGUE OF AMERICA

The elections of 1867-68 showed that the Negroes were well organized
under the control of the radical Republican leaders and that their
former masters had none of the influence over the blacks in political
matters which had been feared by some Northern friends of the Negro
and had been hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Pat