These election tickets are from the election of 1868, which put to a vote both a new state constitution and the elected officials to carry it out. The Democrats (“Against Constitution,” at left) opposed the constitution, which prohibited former Confederate leaders from serving in office and enfranchised all adult males. The Union Republicans (at right) approved of the new constitution, but they were defeated in a close election, and the constitution was rejected. In 1869, after intervention from President Ulysses S. Grant, an altered constitution passed and James Lusk Alcorn was elected governor, followed in 1870 by Mississippi’s readmission to the Union.
Source: Westley F. Busbee, Jr., Mississippi: A History (Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2005), 155-58.