t in the other southern states in no election
between 1868 and 1872 did the Republican vote equal the census
figures for Negroes of voting age in 1870. The nearest approach
to this was in South Carolina in 1870, when the Republican vote
for governor was 85,000 and the Negroes of voting age 85,400. In
Mississippi the nearest approach was in the vote for Grant in
1872, when there were 82,000 votes against the census figures of
90,000. The machinery for getting out the Negro vote, and it was
Republican machinery, was such as to permit the assumption that
an unusually large percentage of the Negroes voted at the
elections.

Undertaking to prove that Dent was not a carpet-bagger, he says:

Tho supported by the Democrats he was nominated by a faction of
Republicans; moreover, he was a Missourian by birth, had family
connections in Mississippi, and had, while living in California
married the daughter of a prominent Mississippian. He was
scarcely a typical carpet-bagger. That there should have been a
split in the Republican party of the state so early is not a very
good argument for the character of the leaders or of the measures
they endorsed.

Of the high hopes of such men as Alcorn there can be no doubt;
but scarcely less doubtful was the failure to realize their
hopes. Alcorn himself favored Negro disfranchisement in 1890.

Referring to others, the expert continues:

Judges Peyton was a Republican, Tarbell a carpet-bagger, but
Simrall is generally classed as a Democrat. He was chairman of
the state legislative committee that reported in favor of
rejecting the 14th Amendment. Riley classes him as a Democrat, as
does Garner, tho Mayes calls him a moderate Republican, of the
same class as Dent. Tarbell seems to have been a good judge.
Garner is lukewarm in his appreciation, but Lamar said that "his
decisions attest his extraordinary ability and industry." All
commend his uprightness. Tarbell in 1887 called himself a
conservative carpetbagger, one who found himself in the minority.
He said that the Republican party in Mississippi collapsed
through its own weakness; having devised a constitution in which
"there was much to praise and to be proud of, and little to
condemn," the party gave birth to legislation of which "the
criticism is, in a measu