ce should be
the aristocrat of the past was perfectly natural, since the relations
between them had been friendly, cordial and amicable even during the
days of slavery. Between the blacks and the poor whites the feeling had
been just the other way; which was due not so much to race antipathy as
to jealousy and envy on the part of the poor whites, growing out of the
cordial and friendly relations between the aristocrats and their slaves;
and because the slaves were, in a large measure, their competitors in
the industrial market. When the partiality of the colored man for the
former aristocrats became generally known, they--the former
aristocrats,--began to come into the Republican party in large numbers.
In Mississippi they were led by such men as Alcorn, in Georgia by
Longstreet, in Virginia by Moseby, and also had as leaders such
ex-governors as Orr, of South Carolina; Brown, of Georgia, and Parsons,
of Alabama.

Between 1872 and 1875 the accessions to the Republican ranks were so
large that it is safe to assert that from twenty-five to thirty per cent
of the white men of the Southern States were identified with the
Republican party; and those who thus acted were among the best and most
substantial men of that section. Among that number in the State of
Mississippi was J.L. Alcorn, J.A. Orr, J.B. Deason, R.W. Flournoy, and
Orlando Davis. In addition to these there were thousands of others, many
of them among the most prominent men of the State. Among the number was
Judge Hiram Cassidy, who was the candidate of the Democratic party for
Congress from the Sixth District in 1872, running against the writer of
these lines. He was one of the most brilliant and successful members of
the bar in southern Mississippi. Captain Thomas W. Hunt, of Jefferson
County, was a member of one of the oldest, best, and most influential
families of the South. The family connections were not, however,
confined to the South; George Hunt Pendelton of Ohio, for instance, who
was the Democratic candidate for Vice-President of the United States on
the ticket with McClellan, in 1864, and who was later one of the United
States Senators from Ohio, was a member of the same family.

While the colored men held the key to the situation, the white men knew
that the colored men had no desire to rule or dominate even the
Republican party. All the colored men wanted and demanded was a voice in
the government under which they lived, and to the support of which