After it was seen that existing political institutions were to be overturned in the process of reconstruction, the white councils of the League and, to a certain extent, the negro councils were converted into training schools for the leaders of the new party soon to be formed in the State by act of Congress. The few whites who were in control were unwilling to admit more white members to share in the division of the spoils; terms of admission became more stringent, and, especially after the passage of the reconstruction acts in March, 1867, many white applicants were rejected. The alien element from the North was in control and as a result, where the blacks were numerous, the largest plums fell to the carpetbaggers. The negro leaders--the politicians, preachers, and teachers--trained in the League acted as subordinates to the whites and were sent out to drum up the country negroes when elections drew near. The negroes were given minor positions when offices were more plentiful than carpetbaggers. Later, after some complaint, a larger share of the offices fell to them. The League counted its largest white membership in 1865-66, and after that date it steadily decreased. The largest negro membership was recorded in 1867 and 1868. The total membership was never made known. In North Carolina the order claimed from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand members; in States with larger negro populations the membership was probably quite as large. After the election of 1868 only the councils in the towns remained active, many of them transformed into political clubs, loosely organized under local political leaders. The plantation negro needed less looking after, and except in the largest towns he became a kind of visiting member of the council in the town. The League as a political organization gradually died out by 1870. ¹ ¹ The Ku Klux Klan had much to do with the decline of the organization. The League as the ally and successor of the Freedmen's Bureau was one of the causes of the Ku Klux movement, because it helped to create the conditions which made such a movement inevitable. As early as 1870 the radical leaders missed the support formerly given by the League, and an urgent appeal was sent out all over the South from headquarters in New York advocating its reëstablishment to assist in carrying the elections of 1870.