Negro leaders were organized into councils of the League or into Union Republican Clubs.

Over the South went the organizers, until by 1868 the last Negroes were gathered into the fold.
* Of these teachers of the local blacks, E.L.

Godkin, editor of the New York Nation, who had supported the reconstruction acts, said: "Worse instructors for men emerging from slavery and coming for the first time face to face with the problems of free life than the radical agitators who have undertaken the political guidance of the blacks it would be hard to meet with." The native whites did not all desert the Union League when the Negroes were brought in.

Where the blacks were most numerous the desertion of whites was general, but in the regions where they were few some of the whites remained for several years.

The elections of 1868 showed a falling off of the white radical vote from that of 1867, one measure of the extent of loss of whites.