The better class, however, rapidly left the radical party as the character of the new regime became evident, taking with them whatever claims the party had to respectability, education, political experience, and property.
The conservatives, hopelessly reduced by the operation of disfranchising laws, were at first not well organized, nor were they at any time as well led as in antebellum days.

In 1868, about one hundred thousand of them were forbidden to vote and about two hundred thousand were disqualified from holding office.

The abstention policy of 1867-68 resulted in an almost complete withdrawal of the influence of the conservatives for the two years, 1868-70.

As a class they were regarded by the dominant party in state and nation as dangerous and untrustworthy and were persecuted in such irritating ways that many became indifferent to the appeals of civil duty.

They formed a solid but almost despairing opposition in the black districts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina.