as to his footnote statement about their
dishonesty." This bears out the statement made by me that if Mr.
Rhodes had desired to be fair and impartial he would have taken all
the colored sheriffs into consideration and would have drawn an
average, which would have shown that in point of intelligence,
capacity and honesty they would have compared favorably with the
whites.

The assertion made by me that the Republican party in the State of
Mississippi included in its membership many of the best and most
substantial white men in that State is disputed because the Republican
vote in the State at the Presidential election of 1872 happened to be
only a few thousand less than the number of Negroes in the State of
voting age, as shown by the census of 1870. It is, therefore, assumed
that very few if any white men voted the Republican ticket at that
election. To ascertain the voting strength of a political party census
figures cannot be relied upon with any degree of certainty, but since
Mr. Rhodes's expert seems to think otherwise I am perfectly willing to
accept them in this instance for what they may be worth. The number of
Negroes of voting age in the State at that time, as shown by the
census of 1870, was 88,850; whites 76,909, colored majority, 11,941,
and yet the Republican majority in 1872 was 34,887. If the voting
strength of the two parties were in proportion to the number of blacks
and whites in the State, as this expert would have the public believe,
and the percentage of blacks and whites who voted were about the same,
which can be safely assumed, the Republican majority in that case
could not have been more than 12,000, whereas it was nearly three
times that number. Assuming that the Republican and Democratic vote
combined comprised the whole number that voted at that election, the
total number of votes polled was 129,463, which was 36,296 less than
the number of voters in the State. Of the 36,296 that did not vote I
estimate that at least 16,000 of them were white men. Subtract the
16,000 from the 76,909 white voters and it will be seen that the
number of white men that voted at that election was 60,909, and yet
the Democratic vote was 47,288, which was 13,621 less than the number
of white men that voted. My own estimate is that of the 82,175
Republican votes, 61,266 were cast by the blacks and 20,909 by the
whites. Of the 47,288 Democratic votes, 40,000 were cast by the whites
and 7,288 by the blacks.

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