The so-called abandoned lands on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia--lands from which whites had fled to escape dangers of the war--were actually seized and colonized with wandering negroes, though the lands were afterward restored to the owners. The germ of the "forty acres and a mule" idea, no doubt, originated in those colonies. The idea was of early conception, as the Grant report shows. The first annoyances caused by the league were the neglect of field work by negroes in order to attend political meetings in daylight, and taking hard-worked mules from lots at night and riding them to league meetings. But in the course of time the organization assumed a military aspect, drilling regularly. Bodies appeared in procession, in regular company order, with arms, banners, drums and fifes, the officers wearing side-arms. At the election they were met outside the towns by emissaries and furnished with tickets, and then proceeded to the polling places and deposited them as directed. All of this appealed to the negroes' taste for novelty and spectacle. CHAPTER EIGHT A REPUBLICAN BLUNDER This narrative is now brought again to the point at which it digressed, the election on the constitution, but before resuming that subject a few words of comment here will not be out of place. The perfidy of Congress in imposing upon the people of Alabama, in violation of its own solemn covenant, a constitution which they had rejected in a lawful manner, was a blunder fatal to the future influence of the Republican party in Alabama. The fourteenth amendment had already injured the party because of its application to great numbers of men who might have allied themselves with it if they had not been involved in the proscription. They had opposed secession as long as there was any reason in opposition, and then reluctantly adapted themselves to the situation. Jefferson Davis had been in prison, demanding trial and ready to abide the result; he was discharged, and the proceedings looking to personal punishment abandoned. Other leaders, including Admiral Semmes, "the pirate," as he was termed in intensity of hatred, were at their homes, pursuing the vocations of peace and ready to try the issue. The excuse for abandoning the prosecution was that, the fourteenth amendment having imposed the penalty of deprivation of citizen rights, the courts could not inflict other punishment. Thus, the men who had, at the cost of popular good will and private friendship, opposed with all their abilities severance of the Union were equally subject to a penalty deemed adequate for "the arch traitor" and "the pirate," so called.