Even in the case of States like Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Louisiana, which adopted new constitutions to signify the overthrow of Negro rule, the new constitutions are nearer the model of the Reconstruction document than they are to the previous constitutions. They differ from the Negro Constitution in minor details, but very little in general conception. Besides this there stands on the statute books of the South today law after law passed between 1868 and 1876 and which has been found wise effective and worthy of preservation. Paint the carpet bag governments and Negro rule as black as may be, the fact remains that the essence of the revolution which the overturning of the Negro Governments made was to put these black men and their friends out of power. Outside of the curtailing of expenses and stopping of extravagance, not only did their successors make few changes in the work which these Legislatures and Conventions had done, but they largely carried out their plans, followed their suggestions, and strengthened their institutions. Practically the whole new growth of the South has been accomplished under laws which black men helped to frame thirty years ago. I know of no greater compliment to Negro suffrage.”[344] It would be idle to deny that these Reconstruction constitutions were other than most effective. William Hannibal Thomas, who might be fitly described as in charge of the rear guard when the Negro government fell in South Carolina and who has criticised the Black Codes even more severely than Dr. DuBois, states: “The Constitutions of the Reconstructed States were framed by white men under the direction and with the approval of the best legal intelligence of America.”[345] They were framed to complete the conquest of the overthrown States, Dr. Dodd puts it thus: