When the new legislature ratified the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Congress seated its delegation, and Virginia Reconstruction came to an end in January 1870. The Radical Republicans had been ousted in a non-violent election. Virginia was the only southern state that did not elect a civilian government that represented more Radical Republican principles. Suffering from widespread destruction and difficulties in adapting to free labor, white Virginians generally came to share the postwar bitterness typical of the southern attitudes. Historian Richard Lowe argues that the obstacles faced by the Radical Republican movement made their cause hopeless: