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 they contributed, and to have a small, but fair, and reasonable proportion of the positions that were at the disposal of the voters of the State and of the administration.

While the colored men did not look with favor upon a political alliance with the poor whites, it must be admitted that, with very few exceptions, that class of whites did not seek, and did not seem to desire such an alliance.  For this there were several well-defined reasons.

In the first place, while the primary object of importing slaves into that section was to secure labor for the cultivation of cotton, the slave was soon found to be an apt pupil in other lines of industry.  In addition to having his immense cotton plantations cultivated by slave labor, the slave-owner soon learned that he could utilize these slaves as carpenters, painters, plasterers, bricklayers, blacksmiths and in all other fields of industrial occupations and usefulness.  Thus the whites who depended upon their labor for a living along those lines had their field of opportunity very much curtailed.  Although the slaves were not responsible for this condition, the fact that they were there and were thus utilized, created a feeling of bitterness and antipathy on the part of the laboring whites which could not be easily wiped out.

In the second place, the whites of that class were not at that time as ambitious, politically, as were the aristocrats.  They had been held in political subjection so long that it required some time for them to realize that there had been a change.  At that time they, with a few exceptions, were less efficient, less capable, and knew less about matters of state and governmental administration than many of the ex-slaves.  It was a rare thing, therefore, to find one of that class at that time that had any political ambition or manifested any desire for political distinction or official recognition.  As a rule, therefore, the whites that came into the leadership of the Republican party between 1872 and 1875 were representatives of the most substantial families of the land.