Between the blacks and the poor whites the feeling had been just the other way; which was due not so much to race antipathy as to jealousy and envy on the part of the poor whites, growing out of the cordial and friendly relations between the aristocrats and their slaves; and because the slaves were, in a large measure, their competitors in the industrial market.

When the partiality of the colored man for the former aristocrats became generally known, they--the former aristocrats,--began to come into the Republican party in large numbers.
In Mississippi they were led by such men as Alcorn, in Georgia by Longstreet, in Virginia by Moseby, and also had as leaders such ex-governors as Orr, of South Carolina; Brown, of Georgia, and Parsons, of Alabama.
Between 1872 and 1875 the accessions to the Republican ranks were so large that it is safe to assert that from twenty-five to thirty per cent of the white men of the Southern States were identified with the Republican party; and those who thus acted were among the best and most substantial men of that section.

Among that number in the State of Mississippi was J.L.Alcorn, J.A.Orr, J.B.Deason, R.W.Flournoy, and Orlando Davis.

In addition to these there were thousands of others, many of them among the most prominent men of the State.

Among the number was Judge Hiram Cassidy, who was the candidate of the Democratic party for Congress from the Sixth District in 1872, running against the writer of these lines.