In the winter and spring of 1866-67, the Negroes near the towns were well organized by the Union League and the Freedmen's Bureau and then, after the passage of the reconstruction acts, the organizing activities of the radical chieftains shifted to the rural districts.

The Union League was greatly extended; Union League conventions were held to which local whites were not admitted; and the formation of a black man's party was well on the way before the registration of the voters was completed.

Visiting statesmen from the North, among them Henry Wilson of Massachusetts and "Pig Iron" Kelley of Pennsylvania, toured the South in support of the radical program, and the registrars and all Federal officials aided in the work.
* See "The Day of the Confederacy", by Nathaniel W.
Stephenson (in "The Chronicles of America"), p.

121, footnote.
The whites, slow to comprehend the real extent of radicalism, were finally aroused to the necessity of organizing, if they were to influence the Negro and have a voice in the conventions.

The old party divisions were still evident.