on that side returned to the fold of
the Democracy in sackcloth and ashes,--upon bended knees, pleading for
mercy, forgiveness and for charitable forbearance. They had seen a new
light; and they were ready to confess that they had made a grave
mistake, but, since their motives were good and their intentions were
honest, they hoped that they would not be rashly treated nor harshly
judged.

The prospects for the gratification and realization of the ambition of
white men in that section had been completely reversed. The conviction
became a settled fact that the Democratic party was the only channel
through which it would be possible in the future for anyone to secure
political distinction or receive official recognition,--hence the return
to the ranks of that party of thousands of white men who had left it.
All of them were eventually received, though some were kept on the
anxious seat and held as probationers for a long time.

It soon developed that all that was left of the once promising and
flourishing Republican party at the South was the true, faithful, loyal,
and sincere colored men,--who remained Republican from necessity as well
as from choice,--and a few white men, who were Republicans from
principle and conviction, and who were willing to incur the odium, run
the risks, take the chances, and pay the penalty that every white
Republican who had the courage of his convictions must then pay. This
was a sad and serious disappointment to the colored men who were just
about to realize the hope and expectation of a permanent political
combination and union between themselves and the better element of the
whites, which would have resulted in good, honest, capable, and
efficient local government and in the establishment and maintenance of
peace, good-will, friendly, cordial, and amicable relations between the
two races. But this hope, politically at least, had now been destroyed,
and these expectations had been shattered and scattered to the four
winds. The outlook for the colored man was dark and anything but
encouraging. Many of the parting scenes that took place between the
colored men and the whites who decided to return to the fold of the
Democracy were both affecting and pathetic in the extreme.

The writer cannot resist the temptation to bring to the notice of the
reader one of those scenes of which he had personal knowledge. Colonel
James Lusk had been a prominent, conspicuous and influential
representative of