When, however, New Year's Day 1866 passed without the hoped-for distribution of Property, the Negroes began to settle down.
At the beginning of the period of reconstruction, it seemed possible that the Negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups, for there were some who had property and many others who had the ability and the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines and the political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency.
It was expected also that the Northern planters who came South in large numbers in 1865-66 might, by controlling the Negro labor and by the use of more efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of the country.

But they were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable of wisely controlling the blacks; and they failed because at one time they placed too much trust in the Negroes and at another treated them too harshly and expected too much of them.
The question of Negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until the middle of 1866.

There was almost no talk about it among the Negroes; they did not know what it was.

President Lincoln in 1864 and President Johnson in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice Chase and prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerous abolitionists, had framed a Negro suffrage platform.

But the Southern whites, considering the matter an impossibility, gave it little consideration.