meanwhile change for the better.

ASPECT OF THE POLITICAL FIELD.

The status of this class of Unionists in the political field corresponds
with what I have said above. In this respect I have observed practical
results more closely in Mississippi than in any other State. I had already
left South Carolina and Georgia when the elections for the State
conventions took place. Of Alabama, I saw only Mobile after the election.
In Louisiana, a convention, a legislature, and a State government had
already been elected, during and under the influence of the war, and I
left before the nominating party conventions were held; but I was in
Mississippi immediately after the adjournment of the State convention, and
while the canvass preparatory to the election of the legislature and of
the State and county officers was going on. Events have since sufficiently
developed themselves in the other States to permit us to judge how far
Mississippi can be regarded as a representative of the rest. Besides, I
found the general spirit animating the people to be essentially the same
in all the States above mentioned.

The election for the State convention in Mississippi was, according to the
accounts I have received, not preceded by a very vigorous and searching
canvass of the views and principles of the candidates. As I stated before,
the vote was very far from being full, and in most cases the members were
elected not upon strictly defined party issues, but upon their individual
merits as to character, intelligence, and standing in society. Only in a
few places the contest between rival candidates was somewhat animated. It
was probably the same in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The Mississippi convention was, in its majority, composed of men belonging