After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the League and, to a certain extent, the negro councils were converted into training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in the State by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after the passage of the reconstruction acts in March, 1867, many white applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The negro leaders—the politicians, preachers, and teachers—trained in the League acted as subordinates to the whites and were sent out to drum up the country negroes when elections drew near. The negroes were given minor positions when offices were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a larger share of the offices fell to them.
The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased. The largest negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total membership was never made known. In North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in States with larger negro populations the membership was probably quite as large. After the election of 1868 only the councils in the towns remained active, many of them transformed into political clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The plantation negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns he became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town. The League as a political organization gradually died out by 1870. ¹
¹ The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization. The League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen's Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the conditions which made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all over the South from headquarters in New York advocating its reëstablishment to assist in carrying the elections of 1870.
The League had served its purpose. It had enabled a few outsiders to control the negro by separating the races politically and it had compelled the negroes to vote as radicals for several years, when without its influence they would either not have voted at all or would have voted as Democrats along with their former masters. The order was necessary to the existence of the radical party in the Black Belt. No ordinary political organization could have welded the blacks into a solid party. The Freedmen's Bureau, which had much influence over the negroes, was too weak in numbers to control the negroes in politics. The League finally absorbed the personnel of the Bureau and turned its prestige and its organization to political advantage.
[CHAPTER IX.]
Church and School
Reconstruction in the State was closely related to reconstruction in the churches and the schools. Here also were to be found the same hostile elements: negro and white, Unionist and Confederate, victor and vanquished. The church was at that time an important institution in the South, more so than in the North, and in both sections more important than it is today. It was inevitable, therefore, that ecclesiastical reconstruction should give rise to bitter feelings.
Something should be said of conditions in the churches when the Federal armies occupied the land. The Southern organizations had lost many ministers and many of their members, and frequently their buildings were used as hospitals or had been destroyed. Their administration was disorganized and their treasuries were empty. The Unionists, scattered here and there but numerous in the mountain districts, no longer wished to attend the Southern churches.
The military censorship in church matters, which continued for a year in some districts, was irritating, especially in the Border States and in the Union districts where Northern preachers installed by the army were endeavoring to remain against the will of the people. Mobs sometimes drove them out; others were left to preach to empty houses or to a few Unionists and officers, while the congregation withdrew to build a new church. The problems of negro membership in the white churches and of the future relations of the Northern and Southern denominations were pressing for settlement.