take away the military from Tennessee, the
buzzards can't eat up the niggers as fast as we'll kill them.'"

The lawlessness of the Negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the
disturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of the
Bureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the
whites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secret
semi-military organizations were formed which later developed into the
Ku Klux orders. When, however, New Year's Day 1866 passed without the
hoped-for distribution of Property, the Negroes began to settle down.

At the beginning of the period of reconstruction, it seemed possible
that the Negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups,
for there were some who had property and many others who had the ability
and the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines
and the political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency.
It was expected also that the Northern planters who came South in large
numbers in 1865-66 might, by controlling the Negro labor and by the
use of more efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of the
country. But they were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable of
wisely controlling the blacks; and they failed because at one time they
placed too much trust in the Negroes and at another treated them too
harshly and expected too much of them.

The question of Negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until
the middle of 1866. There was almost no talk about it among the Negroes;
they did not know what it was. President Lincoln in 1864 and President
Johnson in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice
Chase and prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerous
abolitionists, had framed a Negro suffrage platform. But the Southern
whites, considering the matter an impossibility, gave it little
consideration. There was, however, both North and South, a tendency to
see a connection between the freedom of the Negroes and their political
rights and thus to confuse civil equality with political and social
privileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly opposed
to the recognition of Negro equality in any form. The poorer whites,
especially the "Unionists" who hoped to develop an opposition party,
were angered by any discussion of the subject. An Alabama "Unionist,"
M. J. Saffold, later prominent as a radical politician, declared t