the two races, and he cited the division in the churches
as proof that the Negro wanted separation.

About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly
ready to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the
Southern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain
for a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to Negroes equal rights in
hotels, places of amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. Some
Democratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, because
in the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border and
Northern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold,
and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the Supreme
Court would declare the law unconstitutional. And so it happened.

In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control,
the whites lived at times in fear of Negro uprisings. The Negroes were
armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here
and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families
suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much
heavier loss to the Negroes than to the better organized whites.
Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and
children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked
about the situation in Mississippi:

"I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my
life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of
Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience... the
fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was
the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I
think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself
upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men
looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six
weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither
myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and
honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be
assassinated and my house set on fire at any time."

By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more
homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former
slaveholding class continued to be more considerate