After meeting with Simmons in New Bern in 1898, Daniels concluded that the Democratic campaign to end “Negro domination” would require three types of men—men who could speak, men who could write, and men who could ride. The men who could speak were orators like Colonel Waddell and Charles Aycock, a white supremacist lawyer who was now a polished orator and rising Democratic star. Daniels and other Democratic editors did the writing. And the men who could ride were the armed white men known as Red Shirts, the vigilante militia of the Democratic Party.
