For the leaders the price of amnesty was conversion to radicalism, but this price few would pay.
The new state governments possessed certain characteristics in common.
Since only a small number of able men were available for office, full powers of administration, including appointment and removal, were concentrated in the hands of the governor.

He exercised a wide control over public funds and had authority to organize and command militia and constabulary and to call for Federal troops.

The numerous administrative boards worked with the sole object of keeping their party in power.
Officers were several times as numerous as under the old regime, and all of them received higher salaries and larger contingent fees.

The moral support behind the government was that of President Grant and the United States army, not that of a free and devoted people.
Of the twenty men who served as governors, eight were scalawags and twelve were carpetbaggers, men who were abler than the scalawags and who had much more than an equal share of the spoils.

The scalawags, such as Brownlow of Tennessee, Smith of Alabama, and Holden of North Carolina, were usually honest but narrow, vindictive men, filled with fear and hate of the conservative whites.
Of the carpetbaggers half were personally honest, but all were unscrupulous in politics.' Some were flagrantly dishonest.* Governor Moses of South Carolina was several times bribed and at one time, according to his own statement, received $15,000 for his vote as speaker of the House of Representatives.