The South would not normally have accepted the negro as a social equal.

The attempt to force the barrier between the races by legislation with the aid of bayonets failed.

Without the taste of power during the Reconstruction period, the black South would not have demanded so much and the determination of the white South to dominate would not perhaps have been expressed so bitterly; but in any case the white South would have dominated.
[Footnote 1: See _The Sequel of Appomattox_, by Walter Lynwood Fleming (in _The Chronicles of America_).] Economic and industrial development was hindered by Reconstruction.

Men of vision had seen before the War that the South must become more nearly self-sufficient; and the results of the conflict had emphasized this idea.

The South believed, and believes yet, that it was defeated by the blockade and not by military force.