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 voting precincts elections were as fair as
anywhere in the United States; but it may be safely said that in few
counties where the negroes approached or exceeded fifty per cent of the
total population were elections conducted with anything more than a
semblance of fairness. Yet in some sections the odds were too great, or
else the whites lacked the resolution to carry out such extensive
informal disfranchisement. For years North and South Carolina each sent
at least one negro member to the House of Representatives and, but for
flagrant gerrymandering, might have sent more. Indeed negro prosecuting
attorneys were not unknown, and many of the black counties had negro
officers. Some States, such as North Carolina, gave up local
self-government almost entirely. The Legislature appointed the justices
of the peace in every county, and these elected both the commissioners
who controlled the finances of the county and also the board of
education which appointed the school committeemen. Judges were elected
by the State as a whole and held courts in all the counties in turn. To
this day, a Superior Court judge sits only six months in one district
and then moves on to another. Other States gave up local government to a