Under such discouraging conditions the voting strength of the Republicans rapidly melted away. The party organization existed for the Federal offices only and was interested in keeping down the number of those who desired to be rewarded. As a consequence, the leaders could work in harmony with those Democratic chiefs who were content with a "solid South" and local home rule. The negroes of the Black Belt, with less enthusiasm and hope, but with quite the same docility as in 1868, began to vote as the Democratic leaders directed. This practice brought up in another form the question of "negro government" and resulted in a demand from the people of the white counties that the negro be put entirely out of politics. The answer came between 1890 to 1902 in the form of new and complicated election laws or new constitutions which in various ways shut out the negro from the polls and left the government to the whites. Three times have the Black Belt regions dominated the Southern States: under slavery, when the master class controlled; under reconstruction, when the leaders of the negroes had their own way; and after reconstruction until negro disfranchisement, when the Democratic dictators of the negro vote ruled fairly but not always acceptably to the white counties which are now the source of their political power. Bibliographical Note. The best general accounts of the reconstruction period are found in James Ford Rhodes's History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877, volumes V, VI, VII (1906); in William A. Dunning's Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877, in the American Nation Series, volume XXII (1907); and in Peter Joseph Hamilton's The Reconstruction Period (1905), which is volume XVI of The History of North America, edited by F. N. Thorpe. The work of Rhodes is spacious and fair-minded but there are serious gaps in his narrative; Dunning's briefer account covers the entire field with masterly handling; Hamilton's history throws new light on all subjects and is particularly useful for an understanding of the Southern point of view. A valuable discussion of constitutional problems is contained in William A. Dunning's Essay on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics (1904); and a criticism of the reconstruction policies from the point of view of political science and constitutional law is to be found in J. W. Burgess's Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866-1876 (1902). E. B. Andrews's The United States in our own Time (1903) gives a popular treatment of the later period. A collection of brief monographs entitled Why the Solid South? by Hilary A. Herbert and others (1890) was written as a campaign document to offset the drive made by the Republicans in 1889 for new enforcement laws.