There remained a large but somewhat shattered
Republican party in the South, with control over county and local
government in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democrats
rooted out these last vestiges of Negro control, using all the old
radical methods and some improvements,* such as tissue ballots, the
shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while some
regions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled by
appointed commissions. With the good government which followed these
changes a deadlocked Congress showed no great desire to interfere. The
Supreme Court came to the aid of the Democrats with decisions in 1875,
1882, and 1883 which drew the teeth from the Enforcement Laws, and
Congress in 1894 repealed what was left of these regulations.

*See "The New South", by Holland Thompson (in "The
Chronicles of America").

Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the
Republicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the
Federal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of
those who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could
work in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a
"solid South" and local home rule. The Negroes of the Black Belt, with
less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868,
began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice brought
up in another form the question of "Negro government" and resulted in
a demand from the people of the white counties that the Negro be put
entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 and 1902 in the
form of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions which in
various ways shut out the Negro from the polls and left the government
to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated the
Southern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; under
reconstruction, when the leaders of the Negroes had their own way; and
after reconstruction until Negro disfranchisement, when the Democratic
dictators of the Negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to
the white counties which are now the source of their political power.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in
James Ford Rhodes's "History of the United States from the Compromise of
1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877", volumes V,