In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control, the whites lived at times in fear of negro uprisings. The negroes were armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much heavier loss to the negroes than to the better organized whites. Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked about the situation in Mississippi: I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience ... the fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be assassinated and my house set on fire at any time. By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former slaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the negro than were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to unite against the negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops--tired of being ruled as conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.'" ¹ ¹ Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted in The Land We Love, vol. 1, p. 146.