Much of the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was of only temporary benefit to both races. The results of its more permanent work were not generally good. The institution was based upon the assumption that the negro race must be protected from the white race. In its organization and administration it was an impossible combination of the practical and the theoretical, of opportunism and humanitarianism, of common sense and idealism. It failed to exert a permanently wholesome influence because its lesser agents were not held to strict accountability by their superiors. Under these agents the alienation of the two races began, and the ill feelings then aroused were destined to persist into a long and troubled future. CHAPTER V. The Victory of the Radicals The soldiers who fought through the war to victory or to defeat had been at home nearly two years before the radicals developed sufficient strength to carry through their plans for a revolutionary reconstruction of the Southern States. At the end of the war a majority of the Northern people would have supported a settlement in accordance with Lincoln's policy. Eight months later a majority, but a smaller one, would have supported Johnson's work had it been possible to secure a popular decision on it. How then did the radicals gain the victory over the conservatives? The answer to this question is given by James Ford Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for the Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism." The President stood alone in his responsibility, but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a resolute band of radicals. Radicalism did not begin in the Administration of Andrew Johnson. Lincoln had felt its covert opposition throughout the war, but he possessed the faculty of weakening his opponents, while Johnson's conduct usually multiplied the number and the strength of his enemies. At first the radicals criticized Lincoln's policy in regard to slavery, and after the Emancipation Proclamation they shifted their attack to his "ten per cent" plan for organizing the state governments as outlined in the Proclamation of December, 1863. Lincoln's course was distasteful to them because he did not admit the right of Congress to dictate terms, because of his liberal attitude towards former Confederates, and because he was conservative on the negro question. A schism among the Republican supporters of the war was with difficulty averted in 1864, when Frémont threatened to lead the radicals in opposition to the "Union" party of the President and his conservative policy.