William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[133] Pinchback he may be as fortunate as Antoine. If he cannot reach Antoine, he may hope to rival Demas. If Pete can sit in Jackson or New Orleans, why should not Sam aspire to sit in Atlanta? The lowest senator, he hears, gets three dollars a day for doing nothing but loll in an easy chair, chew tobacco, answer when his name is called, and now and then get up to have a drink. A Negro toiling on a plantation has to pick and carry cotton for three dollars a week. Why not attempt in Georgia what the coloured people do so easily in Mississippi and Louisiana?

“You would be much amused by some of our dark politicians,” says to me a well known personage. “This morning, as my coloured servant was cleaning my boots, he looked up into my eyes, and, with a broad grin across his face, asked me how he could get to run for the State Legislature. The fellow can hardly read, and cannot write; he cleans my knives and holds my horse; and he wants to make laws for me!”