Race lines were more strictly drawn; ostracism of all that was radical became the rule; the Republican party in the South, it was apparent, was doomed to be only a Negro party weighed down by the scandal of bad government; the state treasuries were bankrupt, and there was little further opportunity for plunder.

These considerations had much to do with the return of scalawags to the "white man's party" and the retirement of carpetbaggers from Southern politics.

There was no longer anything in it, they said; let the Negro have it! It was under these conditions that the "white man's party" carried the elections in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in 1874, and Mississippi in 1875.

Asserting that it was a contest between civilization and barbarism, and that the whites under the radical regime had no opportunity to carry an election legally, the conservatives openly made use of every method of influencing the result that could possibly come within the radical law and they even employed many effective methods that lay outside the law.

Negroes were threatened with discharge from employment and whites with tar and feathers if they voted the radical ticket; there were nightriding parties, armed and drilled "white leagues," and mysterious firing of guns and cannon at night; much plain talk assailed the ears of the radical leaders; and several bloody outbreaks occurred, principally in Louisiana and Mississippi.