by a large majority. He denied emphatically that his ad-
ministration of affairs in Mississippi was animated by a spirit
of opposition to the reconstruction acts and the policy of
Congress, and claimed that the opposition to his course had
been confined to disaffected persons, who failed to get ap-
pointments, and others whom he had declined to allow to
enter upon the discharge of their official duties, because they
could not give the requisite bonds. Then there were others,
he said, whose schemes of plunder he had thwarted. These
persons found fault with his administration, and desired his
removal.

Another important witness before the reconstruction com-
mittee was Hon. J. W. C. Watson, an old-line Whig who had
canvassed the state against secession in 1860, but who, upon
the passage of the ordinance, could not persuade himself, as
he says, to go against his blood and kindred, and so went
earnestly into the contest on the side of the Confederacy, and
did all he could, consistently with the rules of civilized war-
fare and of Christianity, to advocate its cause. He was a
member of the Confederate senate from 1863 until the close
of the war, a member of the reconstruction conventions of
1865 and 1868, from which latter he resigned when it be-
came evident that the majority intended to frame a constitu-
tion, the effect of which would be to disfranchise the more
influential whites, and render them ineligible to office. When
the constitution was submitted to the people, he canvassed
the northern part of the state against it. He was satisfied
that had the convention gone no further than the require-
ments of Congress, the constitution would have been adopted
by a large majority. The white people of the state, he said,
were still opposed to negro suffrage, but with no further
disfranchising provisions than were actually required by Con-
gress, it would have been accepted.

On the 24th of March, the committee of sixteen called on
President Grant, congratulated him on his election, thanked
him for removing Gillem, and asked his influence in the
enactment of a bill to readmit the state in spite of the re-
jected constitution. The President told them that the mat-
ter was in the hands of Congress, but it appeared to him that
the most feasible way to settle the question was to resubmit
the constitution, in such a way as to enable the electors to
vote on the obnoxious clauses separately. ¹ While the radi-
cal Republicans were besieging the President and members of

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