the result with chivalrous fidelity"--these old Rebel leaders commenced
in good earnest to carry out their well organized programme, which they
had already experimentally tested, to their own satisfaction, in certain
localities.

The plan was this: By the use of shot-guns and rifles, and cavalcades of
armed white Democrats, in red shirts, riding around the country at dead
of night, whipping prominent Republican Whites and Negroes to death, or
shooting or hanging them if thought advisable, such terror would fall
upon the colored Republican voters that they would keep away from the
polls, and consequently the white Democrats, undeterred by such
influences, and on the contrary, eager to take advantage of them, would
poll not only a full vote, but a majority vote, on all questions,
whether involving the mere election of Democratic officials, or
otherwise; and where intimidation of this, or any other kind, should
fail, then a resort to be had to whatever devices might be found
necessary to make a fraudulent count and return, and thus secure
Democratic triumph; and furthermore, when evidences of these
intimidations and frauds should be presented to those people of the
Union who believe in every citizen of this free Republic having one free
vote, and that vote fairly counted, then to laugh the complainants out
of Court with the cry that such stories are not true; are "campaign
lies" devised solely for political effect; and are merely the product of
Republican "outrage mills," ground out, to order.

This plan was first thoroughly tried in Mississippi, and has hence been
called the "Mississippi plan." So magically effectual was it, that,
with variations adapted to locality and circumstances, this "Mississippi
plan" soon enveloped the entire South in its mesh-work of fraud,
barbarity, and blood. The massacres, and other outrages, while