ohnson's adoption of Lincoln's plan gave notice to all that the
radicals had failed to control him. He and they had little in common;
they wished to uproot a civilization, while he wished to punish
individuals; they were not troubled by constitutional scruples, while he
was the strictest of State Rights Democrats; they thought principally
of the Negro and his potentialities, while Johnson was thinking of the
emancipated white man. It is possible that Lincoln might have succeeded,
but for Johnson the task proved too great.

CHAPTER IV. THE WARDS OF THE NATION

The Negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were
they citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern
answer to this question may be found in the so-called "Black Laws,"
which were enacted by the state governments set up by President
Johnson. The views of the dominant North may be discerned in part in
the organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two
sections saw the same problem from different angles, and their proposed
solutions were of necessity opposed in principle and in practice.

The South desired to fit the emancipated Negro race into the new social
order by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some
things racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently
must be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the
old laws made for the small free Negro class did not meet present
conditions; and because the emancipated blacks could not be brought
conveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a white
population. The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, and
conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status in
court in order that he might be protected in person and property; the
old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must
be protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and
violent whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and
the roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to
work.

Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in control
of the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage," as Judge
Clayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of
Mississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and
pillaged. Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President
Jo