Rolfe and Hays were wheelwrights, but their talents found employment in more lucrative occupations. Rolfe’s first “get-rich-quick” scheme was the selling to negroes of badges, which he said he was engaged in by order of General Grant.
While agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau Hays defrauded negroes of a thousand dollars derived from sales of cotton with which they had entrusted him. That was his disappearing act.
That convention deprived of the right to vote all men who were proscribed by the fourteenth amendment from holding office.
The constitution framed called for an election in February, 1868, to which it was to be submitted for ratification, and at which time officers were to be elected. It was submitted under a solemn congressional provision that if it should not receive in its favor the ballots of a majority of the registered voters, it was to be considered as rejected.
The Democratic convention of 1865 entrusted to the party’s state executive committee, of which General James H. Clanton was chairman, all matters of policy. When the military order for the convention issued, General Clanton called into council with the executive committee one hundred of the leading men of the state. After deliberation, they concluded that the wisest course for the party to pursue would be to go to the polls and endeavor to defeat the constitution, but, in view of the possibility of failure in this, to place candidates in the field, to be voted for under it. Having agreed on this policy, the council was about to adjourn, when the chairman received from ex-Governor Parsons, who was the accredited agent in Washington of the Democratic party, a dispatch, saying:
“I am on my way to Montgomery; will be there to-night. Don’t adjourn your convention; don’t act till I get there.”
The council waited, and the former governor arrived and delivered a speech, in which he uttered the memorable sentence:
“So far as the reconstruction measures are concerned, and this constitution, touch not, taste not, handle not the unclean thing.”
He said that this was in accordance with the advice of President Johnson. Messrs. Samuel Rice and Alexander White supported the ex-governor, and the council was persuaded to reverse its decision and advise the voters to refrain from taking any part in the election. Mr. White prepared the address to the voters.
Accordingly, the Democratic voters abstained from voting, and only one Democratic state senator was elected, and he was not endorsed. Negroes in battalions, armed with muskets and stepping to the beat of drums, marched to the polls, stacked arms, placed guards about them, and cast their ballots for the constitution and their candidates.