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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 128/340

A History of Columbia County, Florida
licans, however, used most of their fraud and deceit in Tallahassee
where they controlled the board of state canvassers. Judge P. W.
White of Quincy tried to issue an injunction against the board, but
he was arrested under a federal warrant and charged with
violating federal election laws. The board rejected the votes of
Columbia, Brevard, Dade, Lafayette, Manatee, Monroe, Sumter,
Suwannee and Taylor Counties. At the state level early returns
had pointed to a victory for the Conservative-Democrats. On
December 26, however, the board of state canvassers awarded the
Lieutenant Governor election to Samuel T. Day and the Con­
gressional seat to Josiah T. Walls. Niblack contested the election
before Congress and was eventually declared the winner, but this
was not until the very end of Walls’ term.31
Walls, the only black Congressman from Florida in this
period, was elected in 1872 and again in 1874. The 1874 election
was challenged in Congress, and Walls’ opponent, Conservative-
Democrat Jesse T. Finley of Columbia County, was declared the
winner. Finley had been a Whig and United States judge before
the war, and a Confederate general during it. The decisive factor in
the seating of Finley was the elimination of the votes of a
predominantly black precinct in Lake City. Walls, who previously
had a victory margin of 234 votes, was not seated after Congress
found irregularities in the Lake City precinct which had registered
588 ballots for him and 11 for Finley.32
At the local level the Republican-controlled board of state
canvassers also stripped the Conservative-Democrats of their ap­
parent victory in the election of 1870. Charles B. Ross had a
sizeable margin over Republican Dr. E. G. Johnson for the state
senate, but Johnson was declared the winner after the board

31Shofner, Nor la It Over Yet, pp. 215-16; Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction,
pp. 626-27.
32 Richardson, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, pp. 177-78; Shofner,
Nor Is It Over Yet, p. 304.
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