ld completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other
states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you would
thus place Southern States in reference to free persons of color
upon the same basis with the free states.... And as a consequence the
radicals, who are wild upon Negro franchise, will be completely foiled
in their attempts to keep the Southern states from renewing
their relations to the Union by not accepting their senators and
representatives."

In deciding upon a basis of representation, it was clear that the
majority of delegates desired to lessen the influence of the Black Belt
and place the control of the government with the "up country." In the
Alabama convention Robert M. Patton, then a delegate and later governor,
frankly avowed this object, and in South Carolina, Governor Perry urged
the convention to give no consideration to Negro suffrage, "because this
is a white man's government," and if the Negroes should vote they would
be controlled by a few whites. A kindly disposition toward the Negroes
was general except on the part of extreme Unionists, who opposed any
favors to the race. "This is a white man's country" was a doctrine to
which all the conventions subscribed.

The conventions held brief sessions, completed their work, and
adjourned, after directing that elections be held for state and local
officers and for members of Congress. Before December the appointed
local officials had been succeeded by elected officers; members of
Congress were on their way to Washington; the state legislatures were
assembling or already in session; and the elected governors were
ready to take office. It was understood that as soon as enough state
legislatures ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to make it a part of the
Constitution, the President would permit the transfer of authority to
the new governors. The legislature of Mississippi alone was recalcitrant
about the amendment, and before January 1866, the elected officials were
everywhere installed except in Texas, where the work was not completed
until March. When Congress met in December 1865, the President reported
that all former Confederate States except Texas were ready to be
readmitted. Congress, however, refused to admit their senators and
representatives, and thus began the struggle which ended over a year
later with the victory of the radicals and the undoing of the work of
the two Presidents.

The plan of the Presidents was at