resulted in the framing of a constitution that would have been much more
acceptable to the members of that party than the one that was finally
agreed upon by the majority of the members of that body. But the
Democratic party in the State was governed and controlled by the radical
element of that organization,--an element which took the position that
no respectable white Democrat could afford to participate in an election
in which colored men were allowed to vote. To do so, they held, would
not only be humiliating to the pride of the white men, but the
contamination would be unwise if not dangerous. Besides, they were firm
in the belief and honest in the conviction that the country would
ultimately repudiate the Congressional Plan of Reconstruction, and that
in the mean time it would be both safe and wise for them to give
expression to their objections to it and abhorrence of it by pursuing a
course of masterly inactivity. The liberal and conservative element in
the party was so bitterly opposed to this course that in spite of the
action of the State Convention several counties, as has been already
stated, bolted the action of the convention and took part in the
election.

Of the Republican membership of the Constitutional Convention a large
majority were white men,--many of them natives of the State and a number
of others, though born elsewhere, residents in the State for many years
preceding the war of the Rebellion. My own county, Adams (Natchez), in
which the colored voters were largely in the majority, and which was
entitled to three delegates in the convention, elected two white
men,--E.J. Castello, and Fred Parsons,--and one colored man, H.P.
Jacobs, a Baptist preacher. Throughout the State the proportion was
about the same. This was a great disappointment to the dominating
element in the Democratic party, who had hoped and expected, through
their policy of "Masterly Inactivity" and intimidation of white men,