The mover of this report might have gone further. He might have shown the evidences of interests in the record office, upon the part of white men by deed and will from time to time, in the recognition, to some extent, of the claims on paternity. How powerful this appeal could become to some is evidenced most strikingly in a will made as far back as 1814,[216] and the value, therefore, of this presentation at the Convention lay in the fact that it turned attention full upon that phase of this question which Southern white men are most apt to ignore. The imagination of the average Southern white man does become intensely excited over any intimation of that form of intercourse between the races which is most distasteful and repugnant to the whites, but from which there is the least likelihood of miscegenation to any perceptible degree. The imagination of the Southern white man is not, however, keenly alive to the steady, continuous progress, almost inevitably resulting from the presence side by side in one section of great numbers of the two races. Yet if miscegenation is a danger, it is not less so while proceeding in the way in which it is most insidious and least shocking to the whites. To the educated moral mulatto this determined opposition by those who sought or were willing to accept joint political action, must have created distrust. When to that, violence grew sufficiently to bring from Jefferson Davis denunciation, it is not surprising that a man of the brilliancy and political astuteness of Chamberlain should have made himself an immense power in South Carolina and drawn to himself a following which it took every effort of the whites to overthrow. Indeed, without Wade Hampton, it could not have been effected. In a convention of 1876, of 165 members, the leader of the Straightout faction could not gather more than 42 votes.[217] But in August of the same year when Hampton[218] threw the weight of his personality in its favor, by 82 to 65, the policy was adopted. It is an interesting fact that while the colored men W. J. Whipper and R. B. Elliott, Cardozo, Gleaves and H. E. Haynes are all mentioned, the name of W. H. Thomas appears in no history of Reconstruction that the writer has read. Cardozo, the Treasurer, was warmly championed by Chamberlain, who declared of this colored official: “Let me tell you that if I knew that your suffrages would sink me so deep that no bubble would rise to tell where I went down, I would stand by F. L. Cardozo.”[219] Chamberlain knew and R. B. Elliott, the brainiest of all his colored opponents, knew that it was useless to try to array Negroes against such a friend of the colored brother as that; and Smalls, Chamberlain’s friend, a good natured, bold mulatto, defeated Swails for the chairmanship, by a vote which indicated what was to be thrown for Chamberlain as the gubernatorial nominee. Elliott therefore made terms and was named for attorney general.