people in the State. Until the enactment of the Reconstruction laws

these negroes were without rights, and though they had been liberated

by the war, Mr. Johnson's policy now proposed that they should have

no political status at all, and consequently be at the mercy of a

people who, recently their masters, now seemed to look upon them as

the authors of all the misfortunes that had come upon the land.

Under these circumstances the blacks naturally turned for protection

to those who had been the means of their liberation, and it would