the Bureau were thrown into
politics until 1872.

The permanent government of the conquered South by the army was
repugnant to even radical Northerners, yet the white inhabitants were
Democratic almost to the last man, and if restored to civil rights would
control their States. The only means of developing a Southern Republican
party that might keep the South "loyal" was the enfranchisement of the
freedman, for which purpose the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted. The
agents of the Bureau were expected not only to feed and clothe the
negroes, but to impress upon them the fact that they owed their freedom
to the Republicans. Some spread the belief that the Democrats desired to
restore slavery. Many built up personal machines. The responsibility
upon these white directors of the negro vote was great, and was too
often betrayed. Generally not natives, and with no stake in the Southern
community, they lined their own pockets and earned the unkindly name of
"carpet-baggers." The Territories had always known something of this
type of ruler, but the States, hitherto, had known bad government only
when they made it themselves.

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 ordered the President to divide the
South into five military districts, whose commanders should supersede
all the state officers whom Johnson had restored. With troops behind
them, these commanders were, first, to enroll on the voting list all
males over twenty-one. The negroes, before the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment, were thus given by Congress the right to vote in
their respective States, and were included in the lists. Excluded from
the lists were the leaders of every Southern community, those whites who
had held important office in the Confederacy; and none was to be
enrolled, white or black, until he had taken an ironclad and offensive
oath of allegiance.

Based upon the list of voters thus made up, state conventions were to be
summoned to revise the constitutions. In every case they must modify the
laws to admit the status of the freedmen, must ratify the Fourteenth
Amendment with its guaranty of civil rights, and must extend the right
of suffrage to the blacks. When all these things had been done, with
army officers constantly in supervision, the resulting constitutions
were to be submitted to Congress for final approval or rejection.

No constitutional theory ever met all the problems of reconstruction.
The war had been fought on the basis that no Stat