Existing comment:
The Readjusters
The Readjuster Party -- which campaigned to readjust (lower) the state's large pre-Civil War debt -- brought together an unlikely coalition of former slaves and poor whites to win control of the state legislature. In 1881 they held the governorship and elected former Confederate general William Mahone to the U.S. Senate. In 1885, voters rejected the Readjusters for a Democratic Party that initiated a century of racial discrimination.
A broadside announcing a meeting of Republicans and Readjusters to ratify a new state constitution of 1870, which prohibited slavery and established free public schools. |