Upon the last States to pass under the radical yoke heavier conditions were imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions" embraced, in addition to the prohibition against future change of the suffrage, a requirement that the negroes should never be deprived of school and officeholding rights. The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through by able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South, nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the beginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poor leadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of the radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite program; the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure the supremacy in the South by the aid of the negroes and exclusion of whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarily successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie between military rule for an indefinite period and negro suffrage; and since most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try negro suffrage. But, after all, negro suffrage had to be supported by military rule, and in the end both failed completely. CHAPTER VIII. The Union League of America The elections of 1867-68 showed that the negroes were well organized under the control of the radical Republican leaders and that their former masters had none of the influence over the blacks in political matters which had been feared by some Northern friends of the negro and had been hoped for by such Southern leaders as Governor Patton and General Hampton. Before 1865 the discipline of slavery, the influence of the master's family, and of the Southern church, had sufficed to control the blacks. But after emancipation they looked to the Federal soldiers and Union officials as the givers of freedom and the guardians of the future. From the Union soldiers, especially the negro troops, from the Northern teachers, the missionaries and the organizers of negro churches, from the Northern officials and traveling politicians, the negroes learned that their interests were not those of the whites. The attitude of the average white in the South often confirmed this growing estrangement. It was difficult even for the white leaders to explain the riots at Memphis and New Orleans. And those who sincerely wished well for the negro and who desired to control him for the good of both races could not possibly assure him that he was fit for the suffrage. For even Patton and Hampton must tell him that they knew better than he and that he should follow their advice.