h slavery".2 Blacks had become the most active group in politics and those in power attempted to keep the balance of power as it was. Southern planters relied on a disciplined labor force in order to profit with their plantations and likewise needed this labor force to remain intact in order for their dominance in politics to remain.3 The interdependence between economic and political power in the South was a key issue throughout the Reconstruction.
             "Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong,... is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South."4 Everything that was a part of the South was entwined in slavery, slavery made the South what it was. Both whites and blacks had been raised with the institution all around them and they knew no other way. The newly freed blacks looked to t
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