Berating Republicans as “Nigger Worshippers,” Democrats conjured up fantastic “scenes of lust and rapine” in the South and “a swarthy inundation of negro laborers and paupers” in the North as the likely consequences of emancipation.35 Although Republicans retained their hold over Congress, they surrendered twenty-eight House seats to Democrats and lost governorships in New York and New Jersey as well as statehouses in Indiana and Illinois.
