It is true, also, that the actual will of
the majority thus voting was thus not unfrequently overwhelmingly
negatived. Yet this was the course prescribed by the law, and the
inspectors of elections were necessarily guiltless of fraud.
So it had been in Horsford. The colored majority had voted when
they chose. The ballots had been carefully counted and the result
scrupulously ascertained and declared. Strangely enough, it was
found that, whatever the number of votes cast, the majorities were
quite different from those which the same voters had given in the
days before the "redemption," while there did not seem to have
been any great change in political sentiment. Perhaps half a dozen
colored voters in the county professed allegiance to the party
which they had formerly opposed; but in the main the same line still
separated the races. It was all, without question, the result of
wise and patriotic legislatioa!
CHAPTER LVIII.
COMING TO THE FRONT.
In an evil hour Hesden Le Moyne yielded to the solicitations of
those whom he had befriended, and whose rights he honestly believed
had been unlawfully subverted, and became a candidate in his county.
It had been so long since he had experienced the bitterness of
persecution on account of his political proclivities, and the social
relations of his family had been so pleasant, that he had almost
forgotten what he had once passed through; or rather, he had come
to believe that the time had gone by when such weapons would be
employed against one of his social grade.
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