Some of the men chosen to high office in the State and nation are men of
ability and high character, who recall the best traditions of Southern
statesmanship; others are parochial and mediocre; and some are blatant
demagogues who bring discredit upon their State and their section and
who cannot be restrained from "talking for Buncombe."
The election of a Democratic President in 1884 had stirred the
smoldering distrust of the South on the part of the North. The
well-known fact that the negro vote in the South did not have the
influence its numbers warranted aroused the North to demand a Federal
elections law, which was voiced by bills introduced by Senator Hoar of
Massachusetts and by Henry Cabot Lodge, then a member of the House of
Representatives. Lodge's bill, which was passed by the House in 1890,
permitted Federal officials to supervise and control congressional
elections. This so-called "Force Bill" was bitterly opposed by the
Southerners and was finally defeated in the Senate by the aid of the
votes of the silver Senators from the West, but the escape was so narrow
that it set Southerners to finding another way of suppressing the negro
vote than by force or fraud. Later the division of the white vote by the
Populist party also endangered white supremacy in the South.
In this same year (1890) Mississippi framed a new constitution, which
required as a prerequisite for voting a residence of two years in the
State and one year in the district or town.
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