That should suffice.
However, the master-key to the feeling which these colored men
noted and probed in their quiet evening talk was proclaimed aloud
by the county newspaper which, commenting on the meeting at Red Wing
and the dismissal of a large number of colored people who attended
it in opposition to the wish of their employers, said:
"Our people are willing that the colored man should have all his
rights of _person_ and of _property_; we desire to promote his
_material_ welfare; but when he urges his claim to political right,
he offers a flagrant insult to the white race. We have no sympathy
to waste on negro-politicians or those who sympathize with and
encourage them." [Footnote: Taken from the Patriot-Democrat,
Clinton, La., Oct 1876.]
The people of Horsford county had borne a great deal from
negro-domination. New men had come into office by means of colored
votes, and the old set to whom office had become a sort of perquisite
were deprived thereby of this inherited right. The very presence
of Nimbus and a few more who like him were prosperous, though in a
less degree, had been a constant menace to the peace of a community
which looked with peculiar jealousy upon the colored man in his
new estate. This might have been endured with no evil results had
their prosperity been attended with that humility which should
characterize a race so lately lifted from servitude to liberty.
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