The conviction became a settled fact that the Democratic party was the only channel through which it would be possible in the future for anyone to secure political distinction or receive official recognition,--hence the return to the ranks of that party of thousands of white men who had left it.
All of them were eventually received, though some were kept on the anxious seat and held as probationers for a long time.
It soon developed that all that was left of the once promising and flourishing Republican party at the South was the true, faithful, loyal, and sincere colored men,--who remained Republican from necessity as well as from choice,--and a few white men, who were Republicans from principle and conviction, and who were willing to incur the odium, run the risks, take the chances, and pay the penalty that every white Republican who had the courage of his convictions must then pay.

This was a sad and serious disappointment to the colored men who were just about to realize the hope and expectation of a permanent political combination and union between themselves and the better element of the whites, which would have resulted in good, honest, capable, and efficient local government and in the establishment and maintenance of peace, good-will, friendly, cordial, and amicable relations between the two races.

But this hope, politically at least, had now been destroyed, and these expectations had been shattered and scattered to the four winds.

The outlook for the colored man was dark and anything but encouraging.

Many of the parting scenes that took place between the colored men and the whites who decided to return to the fold of the Democracy were both affecting and pathetic in the extreme.
The writer cannot resist the temptation to bring to the notice of the reader one of those scenes of which he had personal knowledge.