"The White Liners didn't bother with any such pretense of civility or restraint. On October 7, John Milton Brown, the sheriff of Coahoma County, reported a "perfect state of terror" had seized his jurisdiction. "I have been driven from my county by an armed force. I am utterly powerless to enforce law or to restore order."93 Disheartened by Grant's refusal to rush troops to Mississippi, Ames sat brooding and besieged in the governor's mansion in Jackson. He concluded that Reconstruction was a dead letter, white supremacists in his state having engineered a coup d'etat. "Yes, a revolution has taken place--by force of arms--and a race are disfranchised--they are to be returned to a condition of serfdom--an era of second slavery," he lamented to his wife.94 Sarcastically referring to Grant's and Pierrepont's words, he wrote, "The political death of the Negro will forever release the nation . . . from such 'political outbreaks.' You may think I exaggerate. Time will show you how accurate my statements are."95 To head off threatened impeachment, he decided to resign after the election. His darkly prophetic letter previewed the nearly century-long Jim Crow system that would cast blacks back into a state of involuntary servitude to southern whites."