Emerson Bentley was a white school teacher in Louisiana in the late 1860s. He was teaching African American children at the time. This was not looked upon very favorably by White individuals around him. People saw this as a threat to the power that White individuals had possessed a for a long time. Bentley was also one of the editors of the Republican paper "The St. Landry Progress". He was one of the few white Republicans in the Louisiana parish of St. Landry. Again, he was despised and rejected by people. Though he may have had reason to feel optimistic, things did not go well. Henry Clay Warmouth was a Republican who won local and state elections during that spring. African Americans were supporting him, but it definitely came at a cost. If there were continued victories at the polls, it was said that it would cost him. In some of the primary sources by Warmouth, they address matters like the election of 1868, the 14th Amendment, amongst other things. This shows that Warmouth was very much involved in the political matters of the day.