Although the whites made little gain from 1870 to 1874, the states already rescued became more firmly conservative; white counties here and there in the black states voted out the radicals; a few more representatives of the whites got into Congress; and the Border States ranged themselves more solidly with the conservatives.
But while the Southern whites were becoming desperate under oppression, public opinion in the North was at last beginning to affect politics.
The elections of 1874 resulted in a Democratic landslide of which the Administration was obliged to take notice.

Grant now grew more responsive to criticism.

In 1875 he replied to a request for troops to hold down Mississippi: "The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the Government." As soon as conditions in the South were better understood in the North, ready sympathy and political aid were offered by many who had hitherto acted with the radicals.

The Ku Klux report as well as the newspaper writings and the books of J.S.Pike and Charles Nordhoff, both former opponents of slavery, opened the eyes of many to the evil results of Negro suffrage.

Some who had been considered friends of the Negro, now believing that he had proven to be a political failure, coldly abandoned him and turned their altruistic interests to other objects more likely to succeed.