These men, among them General Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton of Alabama, were of the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on being able to control the Negro's vote by methods similar to those actually put in force a quarter of a century later.

The Negroes were not as yet politically organized were not even interested in politics, and the master class might reasonably hope to regain control of them.

Whitelaw Reid published an interview with one of the Hamptons which describes the situation exactly: "A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was on board.

He saw no great objection to Negro suffrage, so far as the whites were concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist though he was, he was quite willing to accept it.

He only dreaded its effect on the blacks themselves.