The first States regained from radicalism were those in which the Negro population was small and the black vote large enough to irritate but not to dominate.

Although Northern sentiment, excited by the stories of "Southern outrage," was then unfavorable, the conservatives of the South, by organizing a "white man's party" and by the use of Ku Klux methods, made a fight for social safety which they won nearly everywhere, and, in addition, they gained political control of several States--Tennessee in 1869, Virginia in 1869-1870, and North Carolina and Georgia in 1870.

They almost won Louisiana in 1868 and Alabama in 1870, but the alarmed radicals came to the rescue of the situation with the Fifteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Laws of 1870-1871.

With more troops and a larger number of deputy marshals, it seemed that the radicals might securely hold the remaining states.

Arrests of conservatives were numerous, plundering was at its height, the Federal Government was interested and was friendly to the new Southern rulers, and the carpetbaggers and scalawags feasted, troubled only by the disposition of their Negro supporters to demand a share of the spoils.