ntion were proposed the most stringent
of all suffrage laws which would practically disfranchise many whites.
Mr. Pinchback voted against this. He saved the day for the Republican
party by opposing Wickliffe and other demagogues who wished to use the
vote of the colored man by promising a majority of the offices to
Negroes. Pinchback maintained that offices should be awarded with
reference not to race, but to education and general ability.[111] In
this he was fiercely opposed by many who were anxious for office, but
not for the good of the State.[112]

Louisiana did not long delay in returning to the Union. On the same
day on which she voted for the constitution which restored her to the
Union, H. C. Warmoth was elected governor, and Oscar J. Dunn, a
colored man, Lieutenant-Governor. Pinchback was then a State
senator.[113] When the State legislature met in New Orleans in 1868,
more than half of the members were colored men. Dunn was President of
the Senate, and the temporary chairman of the lower house was R. H.
Isabelle, a colored man. The first act of the new legislature was to
ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.[114]

And then ensued another halcyon period for the colored man in
Louisiana, a period about which the average historian has little but
sneers. Government in Louisiana by the colored man was different from
that in other Southern States. There the average man who was
interested in politics had wealth and generations of education and
culture back of him. He was actuated by sincerest patriotism, and
while the more ignorant of the recently emancipated were too evidently
under the control of the unscrupulous carpetbagger, there were not
wanting more conservative men to restrain them.

The period following the meeting of the State legislature in 1868 was
a stirring one. The Louisiana free people of color had a larger share
in their government than that class had in any other Southern State.
Among their representatives were Lieut.-Governor Oscar J. Dunn, State
Treasurer Antoine Dubuclet, State Superintendent of Education Wm. G.
Brown, Division Superintendent of Education Gen. T. Morris Chester, a
Pennsylvanian by birth, congressmen, William Nash, and J. Willis
Menard, the first colored representative elected, although he was not
seated. Col. Lewis became Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police,
following his service as Collector of the Port. Upon the death of
Dunn, C. C. Antoine, who had served his country as a captai