The large landowners would still be the masters of the situation, the power being still possessed by them to perpetuate their own potential influence and to maintain their own political supremacy.
But it was the rejection of the Johnson Plan of Reconstruction that upset these plans and destroyed these calculations.

The Johnson plan was not only rejected, but what was known as the Congressional Plan of Reconstruction,--by which suffrage was conferred upon the colored men in all the States that were to be reconstructed,--was accepted by the people of the North as the permanent policy of the government, and was thus made the basis of Reconstruction and readmission of those States into the Union.
Of course this meant a change in the established order of things that was both serious and radical.

It meant the destruction of the power and influence of the Southern aristocracy.

It meant not only the physical emancipation of the blacks but the political emancipation of the poor whites, as well.

It meant the destruction in a large measure of the social, political, and industrial distinctions that had been maintained among the whites under the old order of things.