A few years ago in the South any man who was an escaped convict from one of your penitentiaries here who would come down to that country and tell the negroes that he was one of General Grant's soldiers, and fought to free him, would vote the last one out; but any of those negroes would come to me at that very time with his money and get me to save it for him, and take care of it for him.

He would put all his confidence in me so far as his money was concerned, but when it would come to politics he would vote with this man, who probably did not own the coat he had on his back.

Those kind of inferences were what did do us in the South very material damage.

Let me illustrate that by a riot in my own county.

In Chicot County, in 1872, there was a proposition to impose upon the county a railroad tax of $250,000 for the purpose of building a railroad.
Q.What proportion of the taxable property of the county would that have been?
-- A.