William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[125] majority on the whole is slight, and her Negro population is so massed as to command the ballot-boxes in many counties. For example — in Baldwin County, Early County, and Sumter County there are nearly two Negroes to each White; in Baker County, Camden County, Columbia County, Effingham County, and Troup County there are more than two Negroes to each White; in Liberty County there are nearly three Negroes to each White; in Bullock County and Hurston County there are more than three Negroes to each White; and in Lee County there are four Negroes to every White. If all the Negroes in these counties held together, under the advice of carpet-baggers and with the help of Federal bayonets, they might set up Negro judges, sheriffs, and assessors, as in Louisiana and Mississippi, and might send up Negro senators to Atlanta, if not to Washington. Lee County might have her Antonie, even though Georgia failed to achieve her Pinchback. At present most of them are busy on their farms and homesteads, leaving politics alone, though every word from Vicksburg and Jackson, Shreveport and New Orleans, is apt to rouse them like a cry of fire.