In the early morning hours of an autumn Monday in 1892, the citizens of Thomson, Georgia, awoke to a mass of nearly one hundred armed men standing around the home of Congressman Thomas E. Watson (fig. 1). The ground outside Watson's home was trampled and muddy from the rain and boot heels of the gathered men.Footnote ¹ Their rifles and shotguns were stacked on the veranda and their “buggies and horses foaming and tired with travel” lined the street.Footnote ² As the guns signified, this was not a social call; it was an army bracing for attack. The day before, H. Seb Doyle, an African American preacher campaigning for Watson's reelection as a Populist, arrived in Thomson. Shortly after Doyle stepped off the train, another black man rushed to warn him that his life was in danger. The man said that two “virulent” Democrats were unhappy that Doyle was back in Thomson. “The air was full of threats to lynch me,” Doyle later recalled. By way of back streets, Doyle arrived at Watson's home seeking protection. Watson and the McDuffie County sheriff called on their Populist friends from neighboring counties in preparation for an assault on Watson's property. “By sundown there were some fifty men,” Doyle remembered, and “fully two thousand men” by Tuesday morning.Footnote ³ Watson later said that these men, along with their weapons, “convinced the Democratic leaders that the dangers of collision with us were too serious to be risked.”Footnote ⁴ Order prevailed.

Fig 1.

H. Seb Doyle sought protection at the home of Congressman Thomas E. Watson in October 1892. Weapons stacked on the veranda and scores of armed men transformed the idyllic Victorian home into a fortress.

- Thomas E. Watson's home in Thomson, Ga., in the Thomas E. Watson Papers #755, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Yet while Watson and Doyle, along with other Populists, saw this incident as a victory of civility over mob violence, Thomson Democrats recalled the event differently. The citizens of “the pretty little town of Thomson [were] pulled out of bed this morning” by the “greatest sensation her people have known in the city's whole history,” wrote the Atlanta Constitution. After becoming “tired of acting the absurd roll [sic] of defenders, without provocation, [many of the Populists] strolled down town, carrying their shot guns and muskets with them,” the article claimed. Thomson Democrats asserted that the threat to Doyle's and Watson's lives was a pure fiction, merely a “silly fake” of a conspiring and desperate politician. Dr. T. P. Reville, the alleged leader of the conspiracy to harm the Reverend Doyle, agreed, claiming that he was away when Doyle arrived and was unaware of his presence until later that evening. Doyle's accusation was nothing more than “an infamous lie,” he declared. The men at Watson's home, according to the Democrats, represented “a lawless mob of armed men.” To the “law-abiding and peace-loving” Democrats of Thomson and McDuffie County, the Populists were not the protectors of civility, but its destroyers.Footnote ⁵

These two very different stories reveal a tremendous amount not only about how Populists and Democrats saw themselves in relation to each other, but also about politics and society in the post-Reconstruction South. In discussing the Doyle incident and events surrounding it, the Populists and Democrats defended themselves and condemned the lawless actions of their opponents.Footnote ⁶ As the national elections neared, each side's goal was to attract new supporters by exposing the cowardly and dangerous nature of its opponents while simultaneously posing as the true protectors of law, order, and good government.Footnote ⁷ But the argument over who was right and who was wrong at Thomson was more than a local dispute; it revealed the true fears and hopes of the Democrats and Populists in both Georgia and the South. While the Democrats sought to remain the party of the white South, the Populists believed the Democracy had sold its constituents out to capitalist interests and was willing to use bribery, intimidation, and violence to ensure its continued supremacy.

Historians have put forward several hypotheses of the origins of the Populist Revolt. Most of the focus has been on the economic complaints of the Populists such as deflated farm commodity prices, increasing debt peonage, and unfair railroad shipping rates. In addition to economic complaints, some historians point to the changes in social norms as an agrarian and cooperative economy succumbed to intense postbellum market forces, increasing competition and consequently human suffering. Yet while economic and social issues were important to the Populists, there was also a growing dissatisfaction with the political order. As the Doyle incident will show, what brought the discontented together under the third-party banner was a desire to clean up politics. The source of the economic and social complaints, the Populists asserted, was ultimately the corrupt political leaders who used bribery, whiskey, and intimidation to maintain their own power and position. More than issues of economics—which often divided white and black Populists—and more than biracialism—which divided white Populists—what made the Populists more successful than their predecessors was their desire to rid politics of its corruption and place power back into the hands of “the People.”Footnote ⁸

Yet in their attempts to expose the inherent corruption of the old parties—especially the Democrats—Tom Watson, Seb Doyle, and others often borrowed from the playbooks those same Democrats had used against the Republicans in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Populists attributed their economic and social struggles to the malfeasance of people in power, particularly to “rings” of powerful merchants, bankers, and railway men. And finally, like the “Redeemers” before them, the Populists linked this perversion of politics with the issues of miscegenation and “Negro rule.”Footnote ⁹ While these tactics worked for the “Redeemers,” they failed for the Populists. By openly calling for the inclusion of black men in the political process, the Populists weakened the effect of this racialized “rhetoric of corruption.” When forced to reconcile with these contradictions, white Populists instead moved further away from African American inclusion to white-only Populism. And in the name of reform, they called for the removal of the very voices they claimed to represent.

Several scholars have attempted to pinpoint the origins of disfranchisement, segregation, and increasing racial violence in the turn-of-the-century South. C. Vann Woodward argued that the Populists’ challenge to the “Solid” Democratic South in the early 1890s generated a call for the disfranchisement of both African Americans and ‘ignorant’ whites. To further facilitate white unification on the “Negro Question,” Southern white conservatives sought to separate the races altogether under the Jim Crow system of segregation.Footnote ¹⁰ Later scholars, including Howard N. Rabinowitz and Edward L. Ayers, challenged this focus on politics, insisting that more was at play in disfranchisement and segregation. Rabinowitz and Ayers, for instance, argued that disfranchisement, through poll taxes and white primaries, preceded the Populist Revolt and was more likely a result of whites’ weariness of election-day fraud and intimidation of non-Democratic voters.Footnote ¹¹ Ayers also added that disfranchisement and segregation was a response to gendered fears of social equality between the races and interracial sexuality.Footnote ¹² In addition to concerns about gender, Leon F. Litwack pointed to the growing assertiveness of the post-Emancipation generation of black men and women that instilled in white supremacists a paranoia of impending “Negro domination.” Conservative whites, Litwack asserted, responded to this perceived loss of control by creating ever-harsher rules governing race relations.Footnote ¹³

Although these arguments have merit, they are incomplete. In order to understand the origins of disfranchisement, segregation, and racial terror, these arguments must be looked at simultaneously. As the Doyle incident reveals, they were intimately tied together. The fears many whites had regarding the social assertiveness of African Americans were magnified by the political unrest of the Populist Moment. Conversely, the perceived possibility of social equality between whites and blacks seemed all the greater due to the Populists’ challenge to the “one-party” South as it promised to protect all men's rights, regardless of race. Thus, politics exacerbated white supremacists’ anxieties and these same anxieties confirmed the perceived existential threat of political independence outside of the Democratic Party. Furthermore, the worsening of African American political life must be analyzed as part of a continuous discourse in which cries for reform against corruption veered into the dangerous language of miscegenation.

The “rhetoric of corruption,” as mentioned above, was by no means a new tool among Southern politicians who desired to wrest power from those who held it at the time. Additionally, politicians of every stripe used it with varying degrees of sincerity in their claims to represent the will of the “true” people, those who “rightly” deserved power. What the story of Seb Doyle reveals, though, is the centrality of this rhetoric to disfranchisement at the turn of the century. Both segregation and disfranchisement came to take on new meanings and significance during and after the 1890s. In an essay analyzing the Woodward Thesis, Howard Rabinowitz raised the question of why things changed in this pivotal decade. He suggested that it was the withdrawal of northern Republican support for black civil rights and African Americans’ growing resistance to de facto segregation “that may have helped move white southerners in the direction of additional laws.”Footnote ¹⁴ John W. Cell's The Highest Stage of White Supremacy gives further credence to Woodward's emphasis on the political and economic concerns that gave rise to Populism and its challenge to white Democratic supremacy. Though in contrast to Woodward, Cell argues that rather than raving, low-class, ignorant racists, it was racial moderates who led the charge to strengthen Jim Crow. These moderates’ ultimate goal, he states, was to construct a system of social relations based on a “softer, more flexible, more intelligent racism” that would ensure the continued dominance of conservative power elites.Footnote ¹⁵ However, the Populists’ use of the “rhetoric of corruption” in the Doyle incident and after indicates that it was not only racial moderates but the very men who claimed to be the friends of African Americans who increasingly called for a more impermeable color line. Rather than conservatives desperately attempting to maintain their dominance, it was the self-proclaimed reformers who came to see a blurry color line as problematic.Footnote ¹⁶ Indeed, it was the “rhetoric of corruption” that allowed erstwhile enemies such as progressive Hoke Smith and Populist Tom Watson to unite on the issue of white supremacy in the hopes of finally seizing control from the New South power elite in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Also crucial to the implications of the “rhetoric of corruption” was the cresting wave of racial violence during the turn of the century. Lynching reached its peak in the 1890s and intricately related to this pinnacle of violence were the very things that formed the foundation of the “rhetoric of corruption.” Although lynching was statistically more frequently the result of accusations of murder, it was rumors of rape that, according to historian Fitzhugh Brundage, “gripped the imaginations of whites to a far greater extent than any other offense.”Footnote ¹⁷ And while accusations of rape did not figure prominently in the Doyle incident, the Populists, including Doyle himself, played into Southerners’ fascination with (and fear of) the sexual crossing of racial boundaries in their critiques of leading Democrats. In the process, both sides roused passions to the breaking point of violence. Similarly, scholars of lynching have cited as one of the justifications, if not a cause, of this racial violence was the quickly waning popular faith in authorities of law. It was the purported inability or unwillingness of legally constituted authorities to maintain law and order that warranted normal people taking matters into their own hands.Footnote ¹⁸ As the Doyle incident reveals, vigilante justice was simultaneously defended and condemned by both Democrats and Populists, depending on their respective roles in the violence. The rise of lawlessness and disregard for order, each side expounded, could only be remedied by electing the “right” men. Accusations of lawlessness, political corruption, and the illicit crossing of racial lines, each of which were ubiquitous in the turn-of-the-century South, formed the center of the Populists’ use of the “rhetoric of corruption” against the Democrats. In the 1890s, the strategy proved futile due to its reliance on black political equality, but it set the stage for the successful and bloody white supremacist “reform” campaign of 1906. The seeds of disfranchisement and the more complete segregation of the races were sown in the 1890s not by the conservative elites, but biracial, reform-minded political outsiders.

***

Henry Sebastian Doyle was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1866 to an Irish father and black mother. As a child, when he was not working as an agricultural laborer to help support his mother and stepfather, Doyle attended Ballard Normal School in Macon.Footnote ¹⁹ The school, established by the American Missionary Association in 1865, was one of many institutions founded by northern benevolent societies and women's clubs with the intention of educating the youth of the South, both white and black. But the education of black children, although necessary, was no easy task. Whites’ resistance, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro.”Footnote ²⁰ Despite the dangers of white hate and resentment, many black families desired a better life for their children than that of the field hand and knew that education was the key.Footnote ²¹

For whatever reasons, Doyle's mother and stepfather took a chance on schooling and Doyle must have done well because he went on to attend Clark University in Atlanta and then Ohio Wesleyan for graduate study. Doyle's son later speculated that his interest in politics and the improvement of his race may have been stimulated by his time in Ohio, where he associated with Joseph B. Foraker, Jr., the son of the Ohio governor.Footnote ²² In 1891, Doyle left Ohio Wesleyan before graduating and joined the preaching circuit of the Colored (later Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, leading him to the Trinity CME Church in Sparta, north and east of Macon, in the heart of Georgia's Tenth Congressional District.Footnote ²³

That Doyle's first congregation was in Sparta was quite appropriate for a politically minded black man interested in finding a solution to the “Negro Problem.” Founded in 1793, Hancock County quickly became one of Antebellum America's wealthiest counties after the cotton boom created a successful planter elite founded on slave labor. The slaves that harvested the “white gold” quickly became the majority population, approximately 68 percent in 1860. Although the county lay in the path of General William T. Sherman's march to the sea, it remained, for the most part, physically unharmed, though economically devastated as the once-valuable human property took to the streets as freemen and women. During Reconstruction, Hancock County sent two black Republicans to the Georgia legislature, but their tenure was short-lived as white Democrats violently ripped the county from the black majority's hands. Sparta and Hancock County again rose to prominence by 1880, producing an even greater quantity of cotton than at the start of the war, but the economy was much more in line with the New South rather than the Old. Railroads, merchants, and bankers prospered while poor whites and blacks struggled to get by. Despite these dire prospects, Hancock County had more black landowners as a percentage of the population than neighboring counties. Thus, Sparta and Hancock County both prospered and suffered in the post-war South, making it an ideal representative of the New South order Doyle would soon challenge.Footnote ²⁴

By the time Doyle arrived in Sparta, he was “a handsome man.” In the first volume of his fictional Black Flame Trilogy W.E.B. Du Bois described him as “one of those dark blonds of Negro and white blood which sometimes makes the most beautiful beings on earth.” “He was physically perfect, with erect carriage and resonant, well-modulated musical voice,” making him not only perfect for the pulpit, but also for the stump (fig. 2).Footnote ²⁵ Earlier in 1892, after reading about Congressman Watson, Doyle attended a meeting in the town of Warrenton, about twenty miles north and east of Sparta, where Watson was to speak. Doyle approached the stand following Watson's speech and asked if he might talk with the black men and women gathered there. Watson gave his assent and learned that Doyle was “a very fine stump speaker.” Major C. E. McGregor, a former Confederate officer and a close friend of Watson, agreed, adding that Doyle was “an exceedingly intelligent man.” Recalling the meeting at Warrenton, McGregor cited these qualities as the basis for Watson's acceptance of Doyle into the campaign.Footnote ²⁶

Fig 2.

Seb Doyle was “a handsome man,” according to W.E.B. Du Bois, “one of those dark blonds of Negro and white blood which sometimes makes the most beautiful beings on earth.”

- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. “Representative visitors of the Congress.” New York Public Library Digital Collections; http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f297-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 (accessed Nov. 27, 2018),

But there was certainly more to Doyle's appeal than his skills as an orator. Watson would not have placed Doyle in the position he did unless they viewed politics in the same light. Both men had lost faith in the two major parties and believed they were rotten with corruption. They believed that both the Democrats and Republicans were parties owned and controlled by wealthy elites at the expense of the masses. Doyle believed that only the good men from the “old rotten parties” could make up a “good party” and with it, good government.Footnote ²⁷ What stood in the way was the corruption of the political process through bribery and whiskey. According to Doyle, most black men aligned with the Populists, but some “would go where a few dollars and a large amount of whisky could be found.”Footnote ²⁸ So adamant was Doyle about the corrupting nature of whisky in politics that he served as a delegate to the 1892 national Prohibitionist convention.Footnote ²⁹ Yet while Doyle understood political corruption through the eyes of an oppressed people, Watson's understanding came from his childhood. After the Civil War, Watson's family, once wealthy planters, lived in near poverty as his father squandered what little wealth remained on failed investments, gambling, and alcohol. Watson came of age as Democratic Redeemers chastised Republican rulers for their incompetence and corruption. His own life seemed to validate the Redeemer rhetoric that the physical, economic, and political devastation surrounding him was the fault of corrupt Republicans kept in office through bribery and intimidation. Nevertheless, Watson saw little change once the Democratic “saviors” came to power (fig. 3).Footnote ³⁰ The Bourbons still ruled and the bourbon continued to flow.

Fig 3.

A passionate firebrand politician, Tom Watson constantly railed against economic and political corruption. His own experiences during youth inspired his politics as well as his acceptance of Reverend Doyle into the campaign.

- Portrait photograph of Thomas E. Watson, in the Thomas E. Watson Papers #755, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

So Doyle went to work. His support of the Populist cause was strong and his speeches, Watson stated, were “peculiarly irritating to the Democrats.”Footnote ³¹ Thus it did not take long before the threats to Doyle's life and person became as constant as they were to Watson's, and the alleged threat in Thomson was not the first. A former ordinary of Hancock County swore that if Doyle remained in Sparta, he would do so in his coffin. At another time, people threatened violence if he did not “keep quiet.” Shortly before the state elections, Doyle looked on with fear as the Sparta mayor and a group of armed men rifled through his parsonage looking for him “with the intention of doing me violence.”Footnote ³²

Even more frightening was the time when a “crowd of roughs” interrupted a speech Doyle delivered in Jefferson County just weeks before the incident at Thomson. These men, Doyle noted, had “come prepared for trouble, which was evidenced by the number of Winchester rifles and revolvers” the men carried. Among the men in the crowd was a marshal from a neighboring town who stormed from the hall after Doyle responded to his heckling with “some repartee.” Unconcerned, Doyle talked among the gatherers outside after the meeting concluded. At the same time, a white man by the name of Jon Hall, wearing an overcoat much like Doyle's, started driving his buggy out of town. When the buggy had traveled about fifty yards, the crack of a Winchester split the air and Jon Hall fell dead. The offended marshal who had earlier stormed from the hall, Doyle asserted, then jumped from the bushes lining the street and rushed out of town, later sending word “that he had got the _____.” Doyle assumed he was the marshal's real target since “in the moonlight it would be very hard to tell the difference between myself and a white man.”Footnote ³³

An even greater instance of Democratic aggression occurred the day of the 1892 state elections. On that day, Doyle went to the courthouse to cast his ballot, but his eligibility to vote was challenged. He took the required oath, placed his ballot in the designated box, and walked onto the front steps of the courthouse. But once on the steps he was met by a group of county and city officials, including the county Judge and the Mayor of Sparta. According to Doyle, Judge F. L. Little quickly approached him with a knife drawn and exclaimed, “‘I have come to cut your infernal throat.’” As Little raised the knife, a man rushed from the courthouse and pushed Doyle aside, urging him to run for his life. Several blows, likely intended for Doyle, landed on the Samaritan's head. Shots rang out as Doyle fled and, upon looking back, he saw two men with pistols drawn and leveled in his direction. The black men at the scene, Doyle claimed, were beaten. Some, being Populists, were jailed before casting their votes. Doyle asserted that “to show that intimidation was the programme [sic],” Governor William J. Northen, a Sparta native, “mounted the court-house steps after the riot, and cheered the persons who had assaulted me and beaten and jailed the negroes who were around the polling place.”Footnote ³⁴

Certainly, Doyle faced harm while campaigning for Watson, and he riled the passions of Democrats with the speeches he delivered. But why was he such a target for Democratic hostility and violence? A friend later recalled admiring Doyle, saying that he “had the courage to challenge” not only racial discrimination but the party system of the South, maintaining political independence until the day he died.Footnote ³⁵

Doyle's real crime against the Democracy, then, was that he was not a party member. When asked if he was a Democrat before joining the Populists, Doyle responded with an emphatic “no.” Furthermore, in his speeches, he compared the Democratic Party with that of the hated Republicans, stating that both parties were beholden to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. They had become dominated, he asserted, by monopolistic interests and were equally responsible for the failures in American society.Footnote ³⁶ Yet in addition to the blasphemy of comparing the Democracy to the party of Reconstruction, Doyle offended the Democrats by resisting their attempts to bring him into the Democratic fold. Once during the campaign, the business editor of a Democratic newspaper printed out of Sparta, offered him money to shift sides and advocate for the election of Major J. C. C. Black, Watson's Democratic opponent. The editor allegedly “intimated that it might not be well for [Doyle]” to support Watson. Later, a man purportedly in Major Black's employ offered Doyle $100 to return to counties in which he had spoken in favor of Watson and announce that he had shifted allegiance to Black. Doyle declined these offers. He stressed that “the reason why violence was attempted on me [in Thomson] and all over the district was because I dared to oppose the Democratic party, and refused all overtures made me by that party.”Footnote ³⁷

In recalling these incidents nearly four years later, Doyle fashioned himself as a peaceful citizen asserting his constitutionally guaranteed rights. His only crime, he asserted, was that he attempted to vote against the Democrats and urged other men, white and black, to do the same. In contrast, he portrayed so-called “respectable” Democrats as lawless, violent, and corrupt. They were the enemies of true democracy and therefore the good men of Georgia. According to Doyle, Judge Little and the mayor of Sparta were just examples of the greater corruption of the Democratic Party, which was willing to commit fraud, intimidation, and even murder to ensure its own partisan success.

However, the Hancock county judge along with the men who stood accused of conspiring to lynch Doyle in Thomson contended they had other reasons to dislike Doyle besides his transgressions against the party of the white South. Democrats such as Dr. Reville accused Doyle of speaking ill of prominent Democrats in various speeches. And Doyle, although pleading innocent, certainly knew he had crossed the lines of racial etiquette. For instance, the morning of the state election during which Judge Little attacked Doyle, a “scurrilous circular” had come into Doyle's hands. The pamphlet was printed by a white Populist in response to Democratic assertions that Populists were in favor of social equality between the races. The pamphlet named several prominent white men of Hancock County, “who were foremost in the Democratic party” as having “given practical illustrations of social equality, and mention[ed] them as having lived with negro women,” Doyle explained. Having received about six copies of this circular, Doyle had handed them to people who asked to see a copy. Among those named in the pamphlet was Judge Little. Little had learned that Doyle had distributed some of these pamphlets and cited this as his justification for attacking Doyle.Footnote ³⁸

Whether true or not, the allegation that respectable white men were guilty of miscegenation carried tremendous weight in the post-Reconstruction South. And while it certainly still happened, it remained taboo and often illegal after Redeemer governments sought to bolster racial boundaries due to fears of “black sexuality.” Since 1867, sex across the color line in Georgia was punishable by up to six months in prison. Many of these anti-miscegenation laws were based on fears that interracial sex would lead to the corruption of white blood and therefore society.Footnote ³⁹ Little was certainly enraged by being accused or exposed (as the case may be), and he was determined to defend his reputation.

According to Major Black four years later, the judge's actions were justified. In his cross-examination of Doyle during the 1896 contested election hearings, Black asked if the charges in the circular “were naturally very offensive” as they impugned the reputations of both the living and the dead. Doyle responded that the accusations were offensive and did include the names of living and dead Democratic leaders.Footnote ⁴⁰ By distributing a circular that made such accusations, Doyle challenged the “respectable” reputations of the accused men. When Doyle first discussed the attack at Sparta, he made no mention of these pamphlets. In his telling of the story, Judge Little and the other Democratic officials were corrupting the electoral process by trying to intimidate Doyle and, through him, the crowd of African American men waiting to cast their own ballots. But in asking about the accusations in the pamphlet and getting Doyle to confirm the offensive nature of those accusations, the Democrats attempted to make it clear that Judge Little was merely defending his reputation, not attempting to intimidate black or Populist voters. Instead, the Democrats implied, Doyle and the Populists were perverting the political process by making incendiary appeals to the passions and prejudices of voters in dishonorable ways, not even sparing the reputations of the dead.

However, Doyle's race may have further inflamed Democratic tempers. According to historian Scott Reynolds Nelson, the Democratic Party had come to power in 1868 by mingling the image of the black rapist with stories of the financial malfeasance of the Republican Party. The term that combined these two seemingly unrelated issues was the word “corruption,” which joined the misuse of state funds with images of interracial sex.Footnote ⁴¹ Yet twenty years later this Populist pamphlet turned the “rhetoric of corruption” back against the Democratic Party. Instead, it was prominent white Democrats who stood accused of defiling black women while these same Democrats misused state funds and bribed opponents. The accusations in the pamphlet, if leveled against black men, would have served as a justification for lynching. But as the Populist accusations were directed at the “reputable Democrats of Hancock county,” Democrats exclaimed there was “nothing meaner in conception, baser in purpose, [and] more shameless in expression.”Footnote ⁴² The very notion that whites would have consensual sex with African Americans defied white logics of “superior” and “inferior” races.

That Doyle, a product of the relations between a white man and a black woman, handed out this pamphlet suggested that the accusations not only attacked the honor of white Democrats, but did so in the person of one whose own body represented the crossing of racial lines. A mixed-race man flipped the traditional narrative of miscegenation on its head. Instead of a crime perpetrated by black beasts on white darlings, Doyle portrayed miscegenation as voluntary affairs between elite white men and black mistresses. At nearly the same time, Ida B. Wells published in her Southern Horrors pamphlet that miscegenation laws “leave the white man free to seduce all the colored girls he can” without the responsibility of marriage or support, all the while preaching of chastity.Footnote ⁴³ Although Doyle did not author the pamphlet he circulated, by handing it out he became tacitly responsible for its meaning. And, like Wells, he was not afraid to call the self-proclaimed defenders of women's purity out on their hypocrisy. Despite his claims of innocence in the matter, Doyle most certainly knew when he rose above his “place” as a black man in the South. In calling attention to the illicit affairs between prominent white men and black women, Doyle equated African Americans’ complaints and fears with those of whites, disassembling the racial hierarchy. Only six years later in Wilmington, North Carolina, similar charges made by a black newspaper editor sparked a violent race “riot” in which white mobs roamed the streets terrorizing and murdering innocent black people. In both instances, white conservatives blamed such blatant challenges of the racial status quo on the Populists’ call for biracial political equality.Footnote ⁴⁴

Similarly, Dr. Reville, the man accused of conspiring to lynch Doyle, had his reasons for wishing Doyle harm. Before arriving in Thomson on the twenty-third, Doyle, in one of his speeches at a campground in McDuffie County, supposedly referred to Dr. Reville as a “bulldozer,” saying that he and other Democrats used economic and physical coercion to get people to vote for Democrats. The doctor naturally took offense and confronted Doyle at the railroad station in Thomson as Doyle was leaving town. One Democrat, seeing Reville approach Doyle with his hands locked behind his back, stated his surprise at how calm Reville seemed, for it was well-known that the doctor had a “high-strung nature.”Footnote ⁴⁵ According to Doyle, Reville told him to leave town and that he “‘would like to put a bullet through you anyhow, and if you ever say anything about me again, I'll do it.’” “Fearing violence” because of the doctor's concealed hands, Doyle decided it best to leave.Footnote ⁴⁶ Having been shot at and nearly stabbed, Doyle was not going to question the willingness of Democrats, whom he had accused of bulldozing, to do exactly that.

Dr. Reville argued, in contrast, that political intimidation was not his intention. He admitted to threatening Doyle, but he “never thought of lynching the negro.”Footnote ⁴⁷ In stating that his intentions behind his threat were minor, Dr. Reville framed the encounter as a matter of honor, not of politics. Reville simply would not stand accusations of political intimidation and bribery; his threat was a warning. Like Judge Little before him, Dr. Reville merely confronted a man who had allegedly sought to tarnish his reputation. According to Reville, his threat was only rectifying the wrong committed against him.

Yet as with Judge Little, Reville's self-defense was likely misdirection. It is impossible to know what actually went on in Reville's mind, but there was doubtlessly more to the story. Watson may not have explicitly named Reville as a bulldozer, but he certainly did accuse Democratic leaders of coercion and corruption. Additionally, Watson repeatedly named Reville and others of conspiring to lynch Doyle for political purposes. In spite of this, Reville never openly threatened Watson and satisfied himself by simply denying Watson's allegations. But Doyle openly challenged white supremacy by questioning the reputation of a prominent white Democrat. And in doing so, Doyle belied Democratic claims of honest politics and government, revealing in its place corruption. When Watson wrote about Reville's role in the Thomson incident, he named the Augusta ring as the true source of this corruption and violence.Footnote ⁴⁸ That this ring of bankers, merchants, and railway men who allegedly sold the state to special interests was at fault recalled memories of earlier allegations against the Republicans during Reconstruction.Footnote ⁴⁹

Regardless of whether Reville actually coordinated a group to lynch Doyle, it was well known that Reville did wish to harm Doyle. Adding to this the previous incidents that Doyle had experienced, the threat appeared very real to Doyle and others.Footnote ⁵⁰ And when Major Black asked if Doyle knew anything about the alleged mob being formed, he answered that he was not going to stand around to see if it did. After he received the warning, he sought safety rather than finding out the veracity of the threat.Footnote ⁵¹ As to the Democrats’ later denials that they planned to harm Doyle, he asserted that once their plans were thwarted, denying the plan existed was “the only rational declaration they could make.”Footnote ⁵²

The truth of what happened at Thomson may never be known. There is no smoking gun. But there was more to the story than whether the threat to Doyle's life was real or whether the Populists made it all up to score political points. How the two sides discussed the events in those final days of October are just as important, if not more so, as “the truth” in developing a fuller understanding of not only the campaign of 1892, but also the story of turn-of-the-century racial politics.

In telling the different sides of the event at Thomson, Populist and Democratic newspapers described the events in explicit and implicit language that meant more to their readers than what the words alone seemed to state. They used coded language of “law and order,” “good citizens,” and “good government” that often had deeper meanings tied to social norms like white supremacy and Southern honor as well as historically based notions of federal intervention and “Negro rule.” To the Democrats and Populists, their opponents were “traitors” to their fellow citizens and customs while their supporters were “fair-minded” defenders of peace and accountability to the law. What ultimately differentiated their claims to good citizenship came from their competing visions of what social and political order should look like. The Populists thought that order consisted of independent-minded men, without fear of intimidation or violent reprisal, freely exercising their right to vote.Footnote ⁵³ Both Democrats and Republicans, Watson wrote, had kept men from voting in their economic interest by using race to divide class.Footnote ⁵⁴ In response to the long history of Democratic violence and intimidation, the Populists urged armed self-defense.Footnote ⁵⁵ In contrast, Democrats contended that true security depended on the continued power of the Democratic Party and white supremacy. The Populists were pawns of the Republicans and therefore the harbingers of “Negro domination,” Democrats claimed.Footnote ⁵⁶ Moreover, the Populists’ call for armed self-defense, the Democrats stated, was meant to frighten rather than empower.Footnote ⁵⁷

Thus, Democrats and Populists cited their opponents as enemies to order. Democratic papers depicted Populists as a wild and rambunctious group who went through towns and villages causing a ruckus and terrorizing the people. For instance, McDuffie County Democrats wrote that after Watson and his men delivered incendiary speeches at the courthouse on the twenty-fifth, Watson, after “seeing their utter failure to provoke any disturbance,” adjourned the meeting after which his men walked through the town “with yells and loud talking.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Furthermore, when news that Watson was in trouble reached the town of Lincolnton, the Populists, according to the Chronicle, tore through the town “yelling like Comanche Indians and swearing vengeance on the democrats.” And even more incriminating, the Populist sheriff was “evidently intent on breaking rather than keeping the peace” as he apparently fueled the flames of passion by joining in the demonstrations.Footnote ⁵⁹ The message was clear, with the Populists came lawlessness and unrest.Footnote ⁶⁰

The Democrats, on the other hand, were inherently peaceful. “Talk of shotguns, defending one's self, resisting intimidation, and the like, are never heard at democratic meetings.”Footnote ⁶¹ While Populists gave incendiary speeches, “Democrats are peaceful, and will not be led into trouble.”Footnote ⁶² Democratic papers couched their peaceful intentions in the rhetoric of democracy, saying they would “win with ballots, not bullets.”Footnote ⁶³ But most frequently, Democrats asserted their pacific nature by announcing their utter amazement at the lengths Populists and their insurrectionary leader were willing to go for political gain. “Democrats express the utmost indignation that the quiet and law-abiding town of Thomson should have been filled with such a violent band of men,” exclaimed a Chronicle article.Footnote ⁶⁴ Another article denounced the Populists’ efforts at Thomson as “very ridiculous in the sight of all people of ordinary judgement and common sense,” two qualities of Democratic citizens.Footnote ⁶⁵ Finally, the Atlanta Journal asserted that the Democracy was the best hope for the maintenance of peace. For while the Populists stood guard, “the peaceful democrats of Thomson and the surrounding country were sweetly dreaming of the security guaranteed” by the Democratic Party.Footnote ⁶⁶

This could not be further from the truth, the Populists claimed. At their rallies, they maintained that while calling for party members to arm themselves, it was only for purposes of self-defense. “Let none of us be the aggressor. Adhere strictly to the lines of self-defence [sic],” the People's Party Paper announced after the Doyle incident. It continued, “Remember that one of our men who commits a crime helps the enemy.”Footnote ⁶⁷ As to the Democratic assertions that the Populists were amassing arms for the purpose of terrorizing the citizens of Thomson, the Populists claimed that if not for the intimidation and lawlessness of certain Democrats they would not need arms. Had the armed guards not assembled at Thomson that night, the Populists intimated, the peace would have been stained even worse by the blood of innocent men who dared to oppose Democratic supremacy.Footnote ⁶⁸

Instead, the Democrats were the true dangers to peace, argued the Populists. Watson, in a column of the People's Party Paper, asserted that the Democratic leaders and newspapers had “incited lawless men to a pitch of frenzy which threatens anarchy.” Not only had the Democrats assaulted Populist speakers, but at Thomson they had the audacity to plan an attack on the Sabbath. “In their furious partisanship they are willing to violate the sanctity of God's day,” the column declared, and were willing to discard traditional respect for men of the church, saying not even Doyle's “cloth as a divine” dissuaded the would-be lynchers.Footnote ⁶⁹ Populists asserted that if the voters elected Major Black, Democratic intimidation, violence, and corruption would continue unabated.Footnote ⁷⁰

Doyle repeated the charges that the Democratic press was responsible for the ill-feeling between the parties. In an odd article that gives a great deal of credibility to the Populists’ claims of misrepresentation, the Democratic Chronicle “gladly publish[ed]” a card from Doyle in which he mentioned these misrepresentations of himself and his politics. To preface their publication of Doyle's note, The Chronicle proclaimed, “Doyle is Down, His advocacy of the third party is ended.” The article expounded on Doyle's apparent decision to discontinue the “promulgation of that abominable heresy which is responsible for so much discord and bitterness.” The commentary suggested that Doyle's extensive travels through the district had convinced him that Major Black would claim victory. However, the Democratic reporting appeared farcically comical when compared to the note that followed. In the note, Doyle challenged accusations leveled against him of incendiarism and the abuse of Democrats. He assured The Chronicle that he only counseled peace between the races because he knew that if a conflict arose, black men, “being the weaker, must suffer.” The dangerous charges against him, he intimated, even warranted violent action, and if true, attempts to silence him were not only justifiable, but patriotic. This note damned the Democratic press, accusing it of both lying and of overtly twisting and fabricating the true intentions of Doyle and the Populists. Nowhere in Doyle's note did he denounce the third party or assure Major Black's victory. The Chronicle’s bold headlines were based solely on its anticipation and assurance to its readers “that there is every reason to believe that Doyle will furnish a card on the line of the above within a few days.”Footnote ⁷¹ That card, of course, never came.

Nevertheless, disturbing the peace was not limited to noisily riding through the streets, threatening the lives of preachers, or distorting facts in the news. An even greater danger lay in the disturbance of the racial order. Days before the Thomson incident, the Chronicle published a letter that accused Watson of “incendiarism” by telling his white followers to “arm the colored people to protect themselves at the polls.”Footnote ⁷² In another column, they credited Watson with urging his black followers to “‘wipe out the color line.’”Footnote ⁷³ Additionally, the Democratic papers said that as Watson and his men marched to the courthouse, “negroes as well as whites” had pistol ends protruding from their pockets. And in Lincolnton, where the Populist sheriff purportedly did nothing to quell the passion of Watson's supporters, the town's Democrats laughed at the news that Watson was in danger, seeing the rumor as “too good an opportunity for putting into practice the Watsonian policy of arming the negroes.” They claimed that in addition to the white men who sounded like Comanche Indians, there were just as many black men parading through the streets with pistols in their pockets.Footnote ⁷⁴

In pointing out that the Populists were in favor of arming African American men, or in the very least ambivalent about black arms bearing, the Democratic press struck a chord that ran deep in the Southern psyche. To many white Southerners, black violence was a major fear that had its origins in slavery. But black men with weapons took on an entirely new meaning after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, Southern black men frequently saw arms as the best way to protect their new political rights while white Southern men saw this as nothing more than an act of hostility and a challenge to white authority. Ultimately many whites saw “black voting and arms bearing as the twin pillars of Republican misgovernment.” In 1868, prominent Georgia Democrats called for whites to take up arms to “defend their families and their state.”Footnote ⁷⁵ And while twenty-four years had passed and white Georgians had seriously weakened black Georgian's rights through poll taxes, intimidation, and violence, the threat of black violence remained very real in the minds of whites, especially in the black belt counties of the Tenth District. Only sixteen years earlier, the infamous Hamburg “Riot” occurred just across the Savannah River. This incident proved to white Southerners that black militias encouraged an unhealthy expectation of respect.Footnote ⁷⁶ Additionally, and possibly of greater relevance, the violent overthrow of the biracial Readjuster government in the Danville, Virginia, Massacre was, per the conservative Democrats, a response to a mob of armed black men firing at whites in the streets.Footnote ⁷⁷ Fortunately, the supposed masses of armed black men roaming the streets of the Tenth District did not lead to bloodshed. But the implications were the same: the Southern (white) way of life needed to be defended against the armed mobs of black men that Watson and the Populists were creating.Footnote ⁷⁸

The Democrats also accused the Populists of encouraging social equality. Despite the efforts of Watson and Doyle to clarify that political equality for black men was as far as the Populists intended to go in challenging the Southern racial order, Democrats vociferously argued that that was not the case. In the days leading up to, during, and after the Thomson incident, the Democratic press made this assertion in more subtle ways. The most common implication that Watson and the Populists were in favor of social equality came in the way Democratic papers referred to the Reverend Doyle as “Watson's negro chum.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Benign on the surface, the implication that Watson and Doyle were close friends was meant to warn of the types of interracial relationships that Populism would bring if it succeeded. In the 1896 contested election hearings, J. T. West, an attorney for Watson, asked Ira Farmer about a Chronicle article that referred to Doyle as Watson's “negro chum.” Mr. West asked if this statement was meant as a reflection on Watson. Farmer, a Democrat, asserted that he had not drawn that part of the article and disclaimed any intention of “meaning that Mr. Watson associated with the negro or kept him in his house.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Although Farmer denied any negative implication in referring to Doyle in this way, the Democratic press made similar statements about the closeness of Watson and Doyle. In the October 28 issue of the Sparta Ishmaelite, Democrats repeated that Doyle was Watson's guest in Thomson.Footnote ⁸¹ African Americans, mostly women, frequently entered the homes of white Georgians, but this was purely in a subservient manner as domestic workers, never as guests. In the same vein as referring to Doyle as Watson's “chum,” the statements that Doyle was Watson's guest carried serious meaning. A respectable white citizen would never entertain a black man. For a sitting congressman to do so, it was scandalous. A similar outrage occurred nearly nine years later when President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House. In response, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman of South Carolina stated that it would “necessitate our [whites] killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.”Footnote ⁸² If the Populists allowed black men to think they had the liberty of dining with a sitting Congressman, the Democrats intimated, would the Populists deny black men the liberty of fraternizing with their white wives and daughters?Footnote ⁸³

As the foremost black speaker in either the Populist or Democratic Parties, Doyle frequently found himself at the center of these stories of woe and caution. In his note to the Chronicle, he denounced accusations that he advocated social equality. “I have everywhere respected the laws of the land, and have said that the further apart the races are, socially, the better for both.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Although Doyle was certainly talking of segregation laws, he was not entirely respectful of all the “laws of the land,” and the Democratic press sought to make this clear. The day before the incident in Thomson, Doyle had been arrested in Augusta for the crime of carrying a concealed weapon. While Doyle gave a speech in a nearby town, “several gentlemen” saw in his pocket a Smith & Wesson revolver and telegraphed the police requesting that Doyle be arrested and searched. As the train Doyle took from his engagement entered the depot at Augusta, a policeman boarded the train and arrested Doyle. The revolver was not concealed when Doyle gave his speech, but while on the train, The Chronicle elaborated, “he had taken the weapon from his hip-pocket … and had concealed it in one of the pockets of his overcoat, which he carried slung over his left arm.” The article did not attempt to infer why Doyle may have done this, but the implication was that his intent was ill. While the law that forbade the carrying of concealed firearms was technically colorblind, the article describing the arrest made several references to Doyle's race—even describing his physical appearance—and stated that he was “the negro who has been … stirring up strife and bad feeling among those of his race to the best of his ability” with his “customary harangues.”

Perhaps an even greater discovery, though, was the “big roll of Uncle Sam's greenbacks” Doyle supposedly carried in his pockets. During the search of Doyle's possessions after his arrest, a policeman found that Doyle had $135.Footnote ⁸⁵ This additional detail was quite important. White supremacy meant black dependency. By mentioning that Doyle was carrying not only a concealed weapon, but $135 in cash—enough to buy a bedroom suite, a “plush parlor suit[e],” and a flat top cooking stove and still have $85 to spare—Democrats positioned him not only as a threat to peace and law, but to white supremacy.Footnote ⁸⁶ When a black man, the alleged inferior of whites, held $135, more than most Southerners, white and black, could dream of in the cash-strapped South, he was not only demonstrating his economic independence, but flaunting it by carrying it all on his person. The message, while subtle, was clear: economic independence begot audacity, audacity that had to be extinguished lest it spread like a wildfire, toppling the towers of white supremacy and the continued power over and domination of Southern blacks.Footnote ⁸⁷ If this was what voters desired, the Democrats urged voters to vote for Populists. They suggested these voters reconsider.

The chips were and would continue to be stacked against any independent political movement that desired reform at the hands of black voters. The fact that the Populists openly challenged the system of whites’ political supremacy by calling for black political equality made criticisms about Populists’ racial policy all the more ominous. Thus Populists had to walk a fine line that eased white fears without alienating African Americans. Watson added to Doyle's denunciation of social equality by denying claims that Doyle was his guest. When Doyle arrived at Watson's house, he told Doyle “to take up quarters in a negro house on the lot.”Footnote ⁸⁸ When asked about this fourteen years later, Watson stated that Doyle protested being ordered to stay in a servant's house by saying, “Mr. Watson, I am an educated man, I went to college,” to which Watson responded, “I can't help that, Doyle—I'll protect you but get in that nigger house.”Footnote ⁸⁹ To Democratic reporters, Watson maintained his belief in the superiority of both himself and the white race by referring to Doyle, a man only ten years his junior, as “the boy.”Footnote ⁹⁰ He insisted that neither he nor his followers posed any threat to the social barriers erected between the two races. In fact, as they had with the miscegenation pamphlet, the Populists even turned the fears of “Negro domination” back onto the Democrats. In an article reprinted in The People's Party Paper, the Populists of North Carolina mentioned that “Democrats claim and admit that a majority of the negroes voted the Democratic ticket.” “Only a few Georgia negroes voted the People's party ticket [in the state elections].” The article stated that black voters would divide between the three parties, but “the Democrats will get a big share with money and whisky.” They asked rhetorically, “Now which is the negro party?”Footnote ⁹¹

For over thirty years Democrats did not have to worry about accusations of courting black voters. Indeed since the days of Andrew Jackson, the party had identified itself as the party of white supremacy. Yet the party stood on a knife's edge in the 1890s. It could not afford to push black voters away as they were still important to Democratic dominance. Democratic columns rarely made overt appeals to white supremacists and instead took a more subtle approach, assuming that black readers would not pick up on the subtleties. For instance, the Atlanta Journal wrote, “Every clear-headed white man will laugh to scorn this absurd, reckless and desperate bid for sympathy and suffrage.” The sympathy and suffrage Watson was bidding for came not from whites, but black men.Footnote ⁹² After the Doyle incident, the Democratic press proudly announced the return of “true” men to the Democratic fold. One such story was of a self-proclaimed “Third party man and warm supporter of Thos. E. Watson.” But after hearing the content of Watson's speeches, the man determined that he was “on the wrong track,” concluding that “[Watson] is not the leader for me or any true white man” (emphasis added).Footnote ⁹³ Major Black and other Democrats throughout the state were gaining strength, the Constitution assured, due to “conviction among intelligent people that democratic success means the political, social, and industrial salvation of the south.”Footnote ⁹⁴ As their warnings about the “Watsonian policy of arming the negroes” were more subtle than those of the “redeemers” before them, the Democratic press reminded their white readers that the Democratic party was the white party. The old guard concluded that while social salvation came with a Democratic victory, a Populist victory would be synonymous with social damnation: the demise of white political and social supremacy.

Knowing that the votes of African American men were still crucial, the Democrats also appealed for black suffrage. In doing so, they attempted to place a buffer between themselves and their overtures to blacks so as not to offend whites. In one such attempt, the Chronicle ran a headline declaring, “THREATS OF DEATH.” The article alerted African Americans to the danger posed by the Populists: “The third partyites are threatening the lives of the negroes who voted with the democracy.” Nevertheless, the Democrats promised “the very fullest protection” for their black supporters. To further allay any fears that the Democracy was getting too cozy with blacks, though, the article assured white readers that the black men being offered protection were “worthy, industrious citizen[s].”Footnote ⁹⁵ Other efforts to demonstrate their willingness to protect blacks involved publishing letters from “sensible” black men. One former black Populist urged his fellow black men to work with the Democracy, for “When I was in trouble no one helped me but a Democrat.” He advised his friends to “do as I shall do and not go against them any longer.”Footnote ⁹⁶ In short, Democratic periodicals voiced their concern for the safety of black Democrats, yet did so in a way that suited whites: those being protected were “sensible” and “worthy.” Moreover, their offers of protection were not overt bids for black votes, but rather suggestions that their opponents were dangerous. In fact, as the “THREATS OF DEATH” article suggested, it would be best if blacks stayed out of the polling place all together.

Two weeks after the Doyle incident, Georgia voters went to the polls for the national elections. When the ballots were counted, no Populist candidates from Georgia were elected to Congress. In the Tenth District, Major Black defeated Tom Watson. C. Vann Woodward later said about the election, “Democrats found little difficulty in identifying the ‘cause’ of 1892 with the ‘cause’ of 1872.”Footnote ⁹⁷ In response to Populist appeals for federal supervisors in certain counties, one Democratic editorial proudly announced that Democrats had faced armed marshals before and were not afraid to face them again.Footnote ⁹⁸ Populist votes were thrown out often, and voter fraud was rampant. In Richmond County the fraud was ubiquitous. Augusta Democrats carted in African Americans from neighboring South Carolina, allowed minors to vote, and transported bribed and intoxicated voters from precinct to precinct to increase votes. In fact, “their zeal seemed to outmatch their good sense,” historian Barton Shaw stated, “for Augusta reported twice as many votes as it had voters.”Footnote ⁹⁹ But Populists were not totally innocent. Throughout the state, Populists partook in the same frauds and intimidation the Democrats did. Watson's home county of McDuffie, for instance, had 267 more ballots cast than eligible voters. While both the Democrats and Populists used the same tactics, the Democratic machine was stronger and better able to bribe, coerce, and fake, and therefore claimed victory.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ When Watson challenged the election in the House, Democrats on the election committee, for the first time in Congress's history, denied Watson or any of his party the right to testify in his favor.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Many black voters did find hope, as did Doyle, in the message of the Populists. Some, after the Doyle incident, allegedly viewed Watson as a “savior” and “were anxious even to touch him.”Footnote ¹⁰² Nevertheless, many black men were unable to separate class from race as they saw them intricately connected. Many white Populists, the same men now claiming to be their friends in the plight of “the people,” were often the ones who had earlier donned red caps and rode through the night committing violence and terror.Footnote ¹⁰³ Although the rhetoric was appealing, the realities were all too visible and many blacks did not know whom to trust. In the national elections, many black men stayed at home and voted for neither the Democrats nor the Populists.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ One historian even asserted that due to the actual policies of the Democrats under Governor Northen's leadership compared to the promised policies of the Populists, many African American voters chose the Democrats as “the lesser of two evils.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵

During the campaign, the Populists put forward a vision in which all men, white and black, could freely exercise their political rights without fear of intimidation. Politics under the Populists would be clean and true. The Democratic city bosses had maintained their power through whiskey, bribery, and violence. At the same time, the Populists contended, the Democrats worked for the wealthy elite at the expense of the working masses. Using the same “rhetoric of corruption” the Democrats used against the Republicans twenty years earlier, the Populists hoped for the same results. By tying Democratic boss rule and financial malfeasance to the economic and social plight of farmers and workers, the Populists implied that those who claimed to have “redeemed” their states were the same as those who ruled during Reconstruction. Yet what was interesting about the Populists’ critiques of Democratic corruption was that they also tied this political corruption to the social “perversions” of miscegenation and “Negro rule.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ As the election results reveal, though, the Populists’ flipping of the “rhetoric of corruption” back onto the Democrats proved unsuccessful.

While the Populists attempted to impugn Democratic rule by using the same rhetoric the Democrats had used against the Republicans, they stood on a shaky foundation. The most effective tool in the Democratic arsenal was the linking of political corruption with race. Although the Populists attempted to make this link, their insistence on the political equality of African Americans along with suggestions of armed self-defense weakened the previously effective tactics of the Redeemers. More so, these stances opened the Populists up to Democratic rejoinders that the Populists posed the true danger to white political supremacy. Many whites still feared armed African American voters, and Democrats regularly recalled the legend of Republican misgovernment that was founded, like the Populists, on biracialism and black martial manhood. Additionally, biracial men like Seb Doyle who openly challenged white supremacy appeared to challenge the new Democratic status quo. Democrats stated that as long as white men stood united under a Democratic banner, they could stave off these challenges. To Democrats, the only way to ensure order and good government was to ensure the “solidity” of the white South and the Democratic Party.

The Populists nevertheless continued fighting against the Democratic machine, but became increasingly disillusioned with the promise of biracial politics. No matter how sincerely Populist leaders tried to make the contests about class, economics, and political corruption, they were never able to escape the specter of “Negro Domination.” An editorial in the People's Party Paper in August, 1892, summed up Southern elections perfectly: “The argument against the independent political movement in the South may be boiled down into one word—NIGGER!” It continued by putting forward the fears of whites, saying, “Pious Southern people never dreaded death so much as they do now. They fear that when they knock at the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem St. Peter will peep through the key-hole and say: ‘You can't come in.’” When asked why, St. Peter would respond, “‘NIGGER!’”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Attempting to use the Democratic “rhetoric of corruption” against them, the Populists failed because the link between corruption and race pulled race to the forefront. And as the Democrats were more experienced and were, in fact, the representatives of white supremacy, the Populists touched a third rail and received a larger shock than expected. With this failure of the previously successful “rhetoric of corruption,” the move toward white-only Populism is not surprising. True political reform could not simultaneously lean on black votes and the linking of racial perversion with political corruption, so Populist leaders chose the latter. Eventually they called for stronger disfranchisement to remove allegedly corruptible voters from the electorate, and, in the name of ridding politics of corruption, disfranchised the people they initially sought to help.

Formal disfranchisement had come in stages since the overthrow of Reconstruction. Other forms of disfranchisement had been a constant as members of every party bought, stole, and coerced votes to win even the most minor offices. In 1887, five years before the formation of the People's Party, Georgia passed a poll tax law as one of its first attempts to formally remove undesirable voters from the lists.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ White primaries predated even this in some urban areas, but they would not become an official rule for the state Democratic Party until 1898.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Although this combination removed most black voters from the polls, African Americans still had the ability to vote if Democrats split over any issue in the general elections as the conservatives could, according to Watson, “pay up the negro's back taxes, register him as a voter, and use him as a prop to [their] power” (original emphasis). This was a strategic tool that conservative Democrats used against independent or intraparty reformers as they could call on a reserve of black votes.Footnote ¹¹⁰ While every side benefited from and actively sought black votes, conservatives usually took the cake. And though they claimed black political strength had largely been eliminated by white primaries and poll taxes, conservatives knew the success of formal constitutional disfranchisement posed a distinct threat to their own grasp on the reins of power. Tom Watson proved to be one of the most vocal opponents of conservatives’ control of the white primary as a barrier against reform and led the call for a constitutional amendment fully disfranchising blacks.Footnote ¹¹¹ In the 1906 gubernatorial race, the issue of constitutional disfranchisement formed the foundation.

Watson, although unable to win office himself, maintained control of a large portion of the Georgia electorate; gubernatorial candidates often sought his endorsement in close races. In the 1906 fight between the reformist Hoke Smith and conservative Clark Howell, Watson publicly endorsed Smith, but only after Smith promised to run on a platform of disfranchisement. Despite Smith's initial belief that disfranchisement would be a minor issue, the contest quickly turned into one of race-baiting and heightened racial divide that pushed disfranchisement to the fore.Footnote ¹¹² Interestingly, Clark Howell and other conservatives believed constitutional disfranchisement was unnecessary and illegal.Footnote ¹¹³ Like Watson discovered in the 1890s, Smith learned the link between race and reform proved electrifying. In a campaign bearing many resemblances to Watson's 1892 campaign, Hoke Smith proclaimed himself champion of “the people” against ring rule, corporate railroad power, and “Negro Domination.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ This intense focus on race and the divisions between whites and blacks brought back the same feelings that talk of Seb Doyle generated back in 1892, but this time there would unfortunately be a much bloodier finale.

Not long after Hoke Smith won the race for governor, the racial tensions, exacerbated by the campaign, reached the breaking point. Atlanta broke out into a four-day “riot” in which white mobs murdered and terrorized innocent black men and women. News stories of rising crime, violent rapes, and black presumptuousness fueled the growing flames of race hatred sparked by the campaign. Ironically, many of the victims of this white violence were, like Doyle, success stories who preached that social separation of the races was best for the black community. The “rhetoric of corruption” that combined sensational accounts of black sexual ferocity, corrupt politicians riding on the votes of bought black men and railroad rings, and the alleged ineffectiveness of conservatives’ ability to control lawlessness proved all too powerful. In 1907, the Georgia legislature acted on Governor Smith's promises of electoral reform and passed a constitutional disfranchisement amendment that Georgians ratified the next year by a majority of nearly 40,000 votes.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The first decade of the twentieth century saw reform-minded Democrats ally with former Populists around the “rhetoric of corruption” and rise to power in Georgia. The issue of disfranchisement, thought long-settled by conservatives, proved to be a potent tool not for the maintenance of their power, but for their fall from it.

When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote his fictional account of Doyle's experience during the Populist revolt, he took some liberties with the truth. For instance, he suggested not only that Doyle led Watson to bolt the Democratic Party for the Populists, but that “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman was the true culprit behind the attempt to lynch Doyle. But in exaggerating Doyle's significance in the world of white supremacy and black politics, Du Bois was not too far off the mark. He wrote that, “Doyle had not only studied the Negro problem, he embodied the Negro Problem.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Doyle, as a mixed-race man, represented the consequences of social equality. While he and Watson exposed Democratic hypocrisy by accusing the Democrats not only of political and economic corruption, but also racial corruption, Doyle's own biracial ancestry was proof of it. But as Doyle also challenged the power of white supremacy by urging his followers to resist the white power structure by standing up to racial intimidation and coercion and pushing back, the Populists criticisms proved ineffective and ultimately backfired. Eventually, the Populists abandoned and turned on their former allies, seeing it as the only way to realize the defeat of conservative corruption and the victory of reform. As it had with the Redeemers, the Populists, and Southern Progressives, the “rhetoric of corruption” resulted in an ever-greater restriction of the franchise not only of African Americans, but many of the same whites who had called for that reform. In the end, Doyle continued to preach both the circuit and the gospel of political and racial reform despite the fact that the former unintentionally came at the expense of the latter. Nevertheless, there was still hope because it was tuberculosis, not a bullet, a knife, or a rope that ultimately ended his life.Footnote ¹¹⁷