It was the State and Congressional elections of 1874 that proved to be the death of the Republican party at the South. The party in that section might have survived even such a crushing blow as this, but for subsequent unfortunate events to which allusion has been made in a previous chapter, and which will be touched upon in some that are to follow. But, under these conditions, its survival was impossible. If the State and Congressional elections of 1874 had been a repetition of those of 1872 or if they had resulted in a Republican victory, Republican success in the Presidential election of 1876 would have been a reasonably assured fact. By that time the party at the South would have included in its membership from forty to fifty per cent of the white men of their respective States and as a result thereof it would have been strong enough to stand on its own feet and maintain its own independent existence, regardless of reverses which the parent organization might have sustained in other sections. But at that time the party in that section was in its infancy. It was young, weak, and comparatively helpless. It still needed the fostering care and the protecting hand of the paternal source of its existence. When the smoke of the political battle that was fought in the early part of November, 1874, had cleared away, it was found that this strong, vigorous and healthy parent had been carried from the battle-field seriously wounded and unable to administer to the wants of its Southern offspring. The offspring was not strong enough to stand alone. The result was that its demise soon followed because it had been deprived of that nourishment, that sustenance and that support which were essential to its existence and which could come only from the parent which had been seriously if not fatally wounded upon the field of battle. After the Presidential election of 1872 Southern white men were not only coming into the Republican party in large numbers, but the liberal and progressive element of the Democracy was in the ascendency in that organization. That element, therefore, shaped the policy and declared the principles for which that organization stood. This meant the acceptance by all political parties of what was regarded as the settled policy of the National Government. In proof of this assertion a quotation from a political editorial which appeared about that time in the Jackson, Mississippi, _Clarion_,--the organ of the Democratic party,--will not be out of place. In speaking of the colored people and their attitude towards the whites, that able and influential paper said: