This utterance seems to have won for him a position upon the committee on platform of five white and six colored members, one of the latter Cain, a congressman; yet Thomas was selected to submit it to the convention. Except in minor particulars it was the same as that which the convention nominating Chamberlain had framed, a not unreasonable platform for a Negro to support in 1874 in South Carolina, although scarcely acceptable in all its planks to the whites. In a total vote cast of 149,221, Judge Green was defeated by a majority against him of 11,585. Yet the strength of the vote cast against him was not without its effect upon the brilliant Chamberlain, who, from that time, shed his former skin and became a reformer. How far a question which just about this time arose in the Episcopal Church may have affected political conditions is not to be asserted positively; but that it did affect the minds of whites and blacks can hardly be doubted, for, to not a few it was, above all, a religious question. And a religious question, to not a few, calls for sacrifice. In the year 1875 there was presented in the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of South Carolina the application of a colored congregation for admission into union with the Convention, which application was referred to a committee to be appointed by the bishop to examine into and report upon in the following year. In the minds of many men in the Southern States the admission of Negro delegates involved consequences which might be far reaching and this was very plainly presented in one of the two reports presented in 1876. This report opposing admission presented the matter in these words in part: “The members of this congregation with very few exceptions are mulattoes, many of whom were free before the war and were known as a peculiar class in our community, owning slaves themselves and generally avoiding intercourse with those who were entirely black. Some of this class had established with their former masters and among our white people generally reputations for integrity and civility.... The females of this class sometimes held relations with white men which they seemed to consider and respect, very much like, if not truly marriage. The results of such associations are numerous in our streets. It is this class in which miscegenation is seen and which tempts to miscegenation. If miscegenation should be encouraged among us, then this class should be cherished and advanced.”[215]