No less important to the State than its own political condition was the attitude of the National government. The defeat of the Republican party in the South in the fall election was like a dash of cold water. To an indifference or even a desire to be rid of the whole subject of reconstruction, which had characterized Congress in the fall of 1868, succeeded a resolute purpose to take advantage of every opportunity to gain an effective and permanent control for the Republican party. Even the law passed during the session of 1868-9, which provided that equal eligibility to office should inhere in those who had had their disabilities removed by Congress and had taken the oath to support the constitution in the act of July 11, 1868, was only a party measure to win more firmly the scalawags,[27] as the list of pardons reveals the fact that most had become Republicans.[28] Grant’s attitude was of importance to a degree that Johnson’s was not, for he came into office early in 1869, a popular and trusted executive, who would be free, to a large extent, to direct the policy of the government in the South. But, unfortunately for Louisiana, a brother-in-law, J. F. Casey, was soon put in charge of the port there and so completely won Grant’s ear that the latter approached Louisiana problems with a bias. Friction between the State and National authorities was bound to come, for already at the opening of 1869 the radicals had lost the respect of the army, and recrimination was passing back and forth between the military commander and the executive of the State.[29] Socially, the problem was largely a race question, though the bitterness of feeling toward her conquerors and contempt of carpet-bagger and scalawag enter to complicate the matter. The intensity of her bitterness toward the North found expression in such paragraphs as the following: The black and bloody chapter of American subjugation reads so much like the scenes of the Netherlands and the Palatinate that it cannot claim even the vile merit of distinguished infamy. Let it be blotted out and closed. Let the American government publish and execute this amnesty in good faith. Let them seek new fields of glory and cease to promote men merely because they have distinguished themselves by the slaughter of Americans or by laying waste the regions that Americans have planted.[30] In moments of calmness appeals to the better sentiment of the North are heard, coupled with promises that a spirit of conciliation would be seconded by the masses of the South, which were prepared to accept all necessary and reasonable conditions imposed by the result of the war.[31]