It was relatively easy to exclude most of the negroes by means of qualifications such as these, but every convention was embarrassed by the fact that each qualification excluded, as well, some of the white voters. In nearly every case revisions were accompanied by a determination to save the whites, and for this purpose a temporary basis of enrollment was created in addition to the permanent. Louisiana devised the favorite method in 1898. Her constitution provided that, for a given period, persons who could not qualify under the general clause might be placed upon the roll of voters if they had voted in the State before 1867 or were descended from such voters. The "grandfather clause," as this was immediately called, saved the poor whites, and was imitated by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia. The governor of Louisiana, in 1898, sang the praises of the new invention: "The white supremacy for which we have so long struggled at the cost of so much precious blood and treasure is now crystallized into the constitution as a fundamental part and parcel of that organic instrument, and that, too, by no subterfuge or evasions. With this great principle thus firmly embedded in the constitution and honestly enforced, there need be no longer any fear as to the honesty and purity of our future elections." The Supreme Court, in Williams _vs._ Mississippi (1898), and Giles _vs._ Teasley (1903), declined to go behind the innocent phraseology of the clauses, and refused to overthrow them. Before the courts had shown their unwillingness to interfere, Congress had done the same. Two methods of redress were discussed during the years of Republican ascendancy, 1889-91. One of these contemplated a reduction of the Southern representation in the House, under that part of the Fourteenth Amendment that requires such reduction in proportion to the number of citizens who are disfranchised. Although urged angrily more than once, this action was not taken, and would not have affected cases in which the denial was by force and not by law. To meet the former situation the Republican party pledged itself in 1888. A Force Bill, placing the control of Southern elections in federal hands was considered. It received the enthusiastic support of Henry Cabot Lodge, and was the occasion for another waving of the "bloody shirt." It passed the House, with the aid of Speaker Reed, but in the Senate was abandoned by the caucus and allowed to die in 1891. The South was left alone with its negro problem. In the words of a Southern governor, "There are only two flags--the white and the black. Under which will you enlist?"