The campaign for white supremacy¹ was dragging. Carteret had set out, in the columns of the Morning Chronicle, all the reasons why this movement, inaugurated by the three men who had met, six months before, at the office of the Chronicle, should be supported by the white public. Negro citizenship² was a grotesque³ farce—Sambo and Dinah raised from the kitchen to the cabinet were a spectacle to make the gods laugh. The laws by which it had been sought to put the negroes on a level with the whites must be swept away in theory, as they had failed in fact. If it were impossible, without a further education of public opinion, to secure the repeal⁴ of the fifteenth amendment⁵, it was at least the solemn duty of the state to endeavor, through its own constitution, to escape from the domination of a weak and incompetent⁶ electorate⁷ and confine the negro to that inferior condition for which nature had evidently designed him.  
In spite of the force and intelligence with which Carteret had expressed these and similar views, they had not met the immediate⁸ response anticipated. There were thoughtful men, willing to let well enough alone, who saw no necessity for such a movement. They believed that peace, prosperity, and popular education offered a surer remedy for social ills than the reopening of issues supposed to have been settled. There were timid men who shrank from civic⁹ strife¹⁰. There were busy men, who had something else to do. There were a few fair men, prepared to admit, privately¹¹, that a class constituting half to two thirds of the population were fairly entitled to some representation in the law-making bodies. Perhaps there might have been found, somewhere in the state, a single white man ready to concede that all men were entitled to equal rights before the law.
 
That there were some white men who had learned little and forgotten nothing goes without saying, for knowledge and wisdom are not impartially¹² distributed among even the most favored race. There were ignorant and vicious negroes, and they had a monopoly of neither ignorance nor crime, for there were prosperous negroes and poverty-stricken whites. Until Carteret and his committee began their baleful campaign the people of the state were living in peace and harmony. The anti-negro legislation in more southern states, with large negro majorities, had awakened¹³ scarcely an echo in this state, with a population two thirds white. Even the triumph of the Fusion¹⁴ party had not been regarded as a race issue. It remained for Carteret and his friends to discover, with inspiration from whatever supernatural source the discriminating¹⁵ reader may elect, that the darker race, docile¹⁶ by instinct, humble¹⁷ by training, patiently waiting upon its as yet uncertain destiny, was an incubus¹⁸, a corpse¹⁹ chained to the body politic²⁰, and that the negro vote was a source of danger to the state, no matter how cast or by whom directed.
 
To discuss means for counteracting²¹ this apathy²², a meeting of the "Big Three," as they had begun to designate themselves jocularly, was held at the office of the "Morning Chronicle," on the next day but one after little Dodie's fortunate escape from the knife.
 
"It seems," said General Belmont, opening the discussion, "as though we had undertaken more than we can carry through. It is clear that we must reckon on opposition²³, both at home and abroad. If we are to hope for success, we must extend the lines of our campaign. The North, as well as our own people, must be convinced that we have right upon our side. We are conscious of the purity of our motives²⁴, but we should avoid even the appearance of evil."
 

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