White supremacists had stuffed ballot boxes with Democratic votes and destroyed Republican ballots. And the campaign’s contrived message of the black beast rapist and corrupt Negro rule had persuaded thousands of whites to abandon the Republican Party. The state’s Republican attorney general conceded that up to twenty-five thousand registered white Populists had voted “the white man’s ticket.” Junius Fortune, a Republican clerk of court, embraced the shift to white supremacy. “This election ends the negro in politics,” he said. “And I am glad of it.”
