Deprived of the leadership of the best whites, they could not possibly act with the scalawags--their traditional enemies.

Nothing was left for them but to follow the carpetbagger.
* Revels, Lynch, and Bruce represent the better Negro officeholders; Pinchback, Rainey, and Nash, the less respectable ones; and below these were the rascals whose ambition was to equal their white preceptors in corruption..