422 Chapter 15 Reconstruction and the South
The White Backlash
Radical southern governments could sustain them-
selves only as long as they had the support of a sig-
nificant proportion of the white population, for
except in South Carolina and Louisiana, the blacks
were not numerous enough to win elections alone.
The key to survival lay in the hands of the wealthy
merchants and planters, mostly former Whigs.
People of this sort had nothing to fear from black
economic competition. Taking a broad view, they
could see that improving the lot of the former slaves
would benefit all classes.
Southern white Republicans used the Union
League of America, a patriotic club founded during
the war, to control the black vote. Employing secretThe Klu Klux Klan forces John Campbell, a black man, to beg for his life in Moore County, North Carolina (1871).