Thanks to peaceful elections, black and white Republicans had won a majority of seats in the South Carolina legislature, while the governor was a white Republican and former brigadier general from Ohio, Robert K. Scott. The spectacle of black legislators seemed intolerable to many southern white voters, who skewered the state as “a new Liberia,” while Louisa McCord, a prolific essayist, satirized the new legislature as the “crow-congress” and the “monkey show.”137