Reconstruction And Union 1865 1912

lementary acts the registration was so conducted as to secure the fullest possible enrollment of the blacks and the completest possible exclusion of disfranchised whites. The consequence was that the constitutional conventions chosen by this electorate included in varying degrees men utterly unfitted by previous training for the work of constitution making. Outside pressure and the presence in each convention of a few men of ability served, however, to make the constitutions much better than could have been anticipated. In many respects they were modeled after those of certain Northern states. Particularly laudable were their provisions for public education, a matter in which the constitutions they superseded were, as a rule, lamentably deficient. As a matter of course, they guaranteed entire equality, both civil and political, regardless of race or previous condition. Before the summer of 1868 all the constitutional conventions had completed their work except that of Texas. The electorates of the two Caro- linas, Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia ratified the new constitutions and chose state executives and legislatures before the long session of the fortieth congress adjourned, and that body readmitted these states into the Union. In all these states the mass of the white people had vainly raised the issue of "Caucasian civilization" vs. "African barbarism," but in Alabama they succeeded by systematic abstention from voting in preventing the constitution's rec...