Most white Savannahians appeared to have accepted Abolition even if they did so with poor grace. And there were those who counseled moderation at a time when emotions flared on racial issues:
Elias Yulee urged Savannahians and all
Georgians to accept peacefully the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth Amendments. He urged whites to accept the new amendments
and to judge office-holders not by race, but by qualifications
and character. (Savannah Daily Republican, 12-31-1870)
Louis A. Falligant, a leading white
lawyer in Savannah, also urged moderation as the best solution
to the race problem, in a speech delivered before a crowd in Johnson
Square on May 10, 1868. (Savannah Morning News, 5-11-1868)
Martin R. Delaney spoke to a large audience
of blacks on the corner of Continental and Royal Streets in April,
1869, and urged blacks to pursue realistic goals and said that
“they were not then ready to move from the hoe to the halls
of Congress.”
Richard White, a black Republican, was
elected clerk of the Superior Court of Chatham County in 1868.
Whites resented this and soon brought him to trial on trumped
up charges of larceny. When Dr. J.J. Waring, a white physician
went on White’s bond, he was expelled from the Georgia Medical
Society, which charged that Waring had forfeited his position
as a “Gentleman in the Society by associating with a person
of color.”