Their discretion was only hampered by three conditions, compliance with which was made essential to the presidential approval of their work. They were required to annul the secession ordinances, to formally recognize the abolition of slavery, and to repudiate all debts created to promote rebellion. Beyond this, the disloyal classes of the South were left in undisputed mastery of the situation. The control of the insurgent States, and of the lives and fortunes of the loyalists, white and black, were surrendered absolutely to the men who but a few weeks before had been wrecked in the catastrophe which overwhelmed the rebellion. That they were prompt to improve this unexpected, undeserved and mistaken leniency need not be said. Their use of their new power was both presumptuous and intolerant. In elections, which proscribed Union men as unworthy of trust, conventions were chosen which accepted ungraciously the mere fact of emancipation, and which repudiated the rebel debts only under repeated presidential compulsion. State governments were then organized, which placed men whose disloyalty had been conspicuous in responsible positions, and which sent unamnestied leaders of the rebellion in the field and in council to Washington as claimants of Congressional seats. The State legislation which followed embodied in shameful laws the unquenched diabolism of the slave power. In statutory phraseology these enactments declared, "politically and socially this is a white man's government," and, impudently asserting that Congress was without any power over the matter, the men who had, in form, admitted the death of slavery proceeded to establish peonage in its stead. No body of laws adopted by any civilized nation in this century has equaled in studied injustice and cruelty those by which the "Johnson governments" of 1865 and 1866 sought to prevent the freedmen from rising from the level of admitted and hopeless inferiority, and to convince the blacks that in ceasing to be slaves they had only become serfs. Colored people were denied the right to acquire or dispose of public property. It was made a crime for a negro to enter a plantation without the consent of its owner or agent. Freedmen were declared vagrants, and punished as such for preaching the gospel without a license from some regularly organized church. Colored men failing to pay capitation tax were declared vagrants and the sale of their services was permitted as a penalty. Black persons were prohibited from renting or leasing lands except in incorporated towns or villages. Their owning or bearing arms was declared to be a violation of the peace. For a negro to break a labor contract was made an offense punishable by imprisonment. Colored laborers on farms were prohibited from selling poultry or farm products, and it was made a misdemeanor to purchase from them. This class was also denied the right of forming part of the militia, and it was made an offense for any