adopted. Around election time armed bands of whites would sometimes
patrol the roads wearing some special badge or garment. Men would gallop
past the houses of negroes at night, firing guns or pistols into the air
and occasionally into the roofs of the houses. Negroes talking politics
were occasionally visited and warned--sometimes with physical
violence--to keep silent. On election day determined men with rifles or
shotguns, ostensibly intending to go hunting after they had voted,
gathered around the polls. An occasional random shot might kick up the
dust near an approaching negro. Men actually or apparently the worse for
liquor might stagger around, seeking an excuse for a fight. It is not
surprising that among the negroes the impression that it was unwise to
attempt to vote gained ground.

Less crude but no less effective methods were employed later. As
candidates or party organizations furnished the ballots, the "tissue
ballot" came into use. Half a dozen of these might easily be dropped
into the box at one time. If the surplus ballots were withdrawn by a
blindfolded official, the difference in length or in the texture or
quality of the ballot made possible the withdrawal of an undue
proportion of Republican votes. Usually separate boxes were supplied for
different sets of officers, and it was often provided that a ballot in
the wrong box was void. An occasional intentional shifting of boxes thus
caused many illiterate negroes to throw away their votes. This scheme
reached its climax in the "eight box law" of South Carolina which made
illiterate voting ineffective without aid. Immediately after any
literate Republican, white or black, left the polling place the boxes
were shifted, and the illiterates whose tickets he had carefully
arranged deposited their ballots in the wrong boxes. White boys of
eighteen, if well grown, sometimes voted, while a young negro unable to
produce any evidence of his age had difficulty in proving the attainment
of his majority. In some precincts illiterate Republicans were appointed
officers of elections, and then the vote was juggled shamelessly. A
study of election returns of some counties of the black belt shows
occasional Democratic majorities greater than the total white
population. The same tricks which were so long practiced in New York and
Philadelphia were successful in the South.

Conditions such as these were not prevalent over the entire South. In a
large proportion of the v