With respect to Georgia a peculiar condition of affairs existed. In June, 1868, Georgia had been readmitted with the first of the reconstructed States. The state legislature at once expelled the twenty-seven negro members, on the ground that the recent legislation and the state constitution gave the negroes the right to vote but not to hold office. Congress, which had already admitted the Georgia representatives, refused to receive the senators and turned the State back to military control. In 1869-70 Georgia was again reconstructed after a drastic purging of the Legislature by the military commander, the reseating of the negro members, and the ratification of both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The State was readmitted to representation in July, 1870, after the failure of a strong effort to extend for two years the carpetbag government of the State.
Upon the last States to pass under the radical yoke heavier conditions were imposed than upon the earlier ones. Not only were they required to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, but the "fundamental conditions" embraced, in addition to the prohibition against future change of the suffrage, a requirement that the negroes should never be deprived of school and officeholding rights.
The congressional plan of reconstruction had thus been carried through by able leaders in the face of the opposition of a united white South, nearly half the North, the President, the Supreme Court, and in the beginning a majority of Congress. This success was due to the poor leadership of the conservatives and to the ability and solidarity of the radicals led by Stevens and Sumner. The radicals had a definite program; the moderates had not. The object of the radicals was to secure the supremacy in the South by the aid of the negroes and exclusion of whites. Was this policy politically wise? It was at least temporarily successful. The choice offered by the radicals seemed to lie between military rule for an indefinite period and negro suffrage; and since most Americans found military rule distasteful, they preferred to try negro suffrage. But, after all, negro suffrage had to be supported by military rule, and in the end both failed completely.