ABSTRACT
The abolition-democracy of the North had been willing to try real democracy in the South because they believed in the capabilities of the Negro race and also because they had passed through war, oligarchy, and the almost unbridled power of Andrew Johnson. Property control especially of land and labor had always dominated politics in the South, and after the war, it set itself to put lab or to work at a wage approximating as nearly as possible slavery conditions, in order to restore capital lost in the war. To men like Charles Sumner, the future of democracy in America depended on bringing the Southern revolution to a successful close by accomplishing two things: the making of the black freedmen really free, and the sweeping away of the animosities due to the war. Reconstruction, therefore, in the South degenerated into a fight of rivals to control property and through that to control the labor vote.
