rty for the purpose of controlling the Negro vote in the South. Its
representatives were found in the lobbies of Congress demanding extreme
measures, endorsing the reconstruction policies of Congress, and
condemning the course of the President. After the first year or two of
reconstruction, the Leagues in the larger Northern cities began to grow
away from the strictly political Union League of America and tended to
become mere social clubs for members of the same political belief. The
eminently respectable Philadelphia and New York clubs had little in
common with the leagues of the Southern and Border States except a
general adherence to the radical program.

Even before the end of the war the League was extending its organization
into the parts of the Confederacy held by the Federal forces, admitting
to membership the army officers and the leading Unionists, though
maintaining for the sake of the latter "a discreet secrecy." With the
close of the war and the establishment of army posts over the South,
the League grew rapidly. The civilians who followed the army, the Bureau
agents, the missionaries, and the Northern teachers formed one class of
membership; and the loyalists of the hill and mountain country, who had
become disaffected toward the Confederate administration and had formed
such orders as the Heroes of America, the Red String Band, and the
Peace Society, formed another class. Soon there were added to these the
deserters, a few old line Whigs who intensely disliked the Democrats,
and others who decided to cast their lot with the victors. The
disaffected politicians of the up-country, who wanted to be cared for in
the reconstruction, saw in the organization a means of dislodging from
power the political leaders of the low country. It has been estimated
that thirty percent of the white men of the hill and mountain counties
of the South joined the Union League in 1865-66. They cared little about
the original objects of the order but hoped to make it the nucleus of an
anti-Democratic political organization.

But on the admission of Negroes into the lodges or councils controlled
by Northern men the native white members began to withdraw. From the
beginning the Bureau agents, the teachers, and the preachers had been
holding meetings of Negroes, to whom they gave advice about the
problems of freedom. Very early these advisers of the blacks grasped the
possibilities inherent in their control of the schools, the ratio