ot less
by Northern opinion, which had become disgusted with the reckless
dishonesty that was practiced under the name of republicanism, than by
the energetic opposition of all good citizens of the State, there came a
welcome end to the bitter controversy that had been going on. The fierce
rancor and prejudice that had been aroused gradually died out; so that
in 1872, shortly after the State had been rescued from misrule, Horace
Greeley, the great abolition editor, received in Georgia a majority of
more than seventy-one thousand votes over the straight-out Democratic
candidate. This, more than any other event, showed the improving temper
of the people, and their willingness to make compromises and concessions
for the purpose of restoring the Union and burying the spirit of
sectionalism.

With this improved temper there came an improvement in the material
conditions of the State. Free negro labor was a problem which the
planters had to meet. For a time it presented many difficulties. It
was hard to make and enforce contracts with the negroes, who had been
demoralized and made suspicious by The Union League and by the harsh and
unjustifiable acts of men who acted under the name, but not under the
authority, of the Ku Klux Klan. But gradually all these difficulties
were overcome. The negroes settled down to work, and with them a good
many white men who had been left adrift by the fortunes of war and the
prostration of industries. This vast change was not brought about in a
day or a month, or even in a year, but was the gradual outgrowth of a
bitter feeling,--the slow awakening to the fact that matters were not as
bad on a better acquaintance as they had seemed. There was, of course,
the negro problem; but the wiser men soon saw that this problem, such
as it was, would settle itself sooner or later. The result was that
everybody began to take a day off from politics occasionally, and devote
themselves to the upbuilding of the resources of the State.

At first, and for several years, the negro problem seemed to be a very
serious matter indeed. All the statesmen, all the politicians, all the
historians, and all the newspaper editors, discussed it morning, noon,
and night for a long time. Some wanted it settled one way, and some
another. At the North the men who had indorsed and approved the bayonet
governments of the South thought that laws ought to be passed giving the
negroes social equality with the whites. Finally a comp