THE PINEY WOODS 169 the legislature from Wayne County in 1870–71; and Alanson Goss, who represented Marion and Hancock counties and did not sign the finished document. One Piney Woods delegate, John Moody, did not attend the convention and left Greene, Jackson, and Perry counties without a voice in the proceedings. Democrats managed to defeat the first attempt at passing the new constitution in 1868, but a second election in 1869 successfully ratified the document. When the new state legislature met in January of 1870, it quickly ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, an action required for readmission to the Union. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill readmitting Mississippi to the Union on February 23, 1870. For six years, Republicans controlled the major executive offices of the state and the state legislature. Conservative Democrats actively worked to oust the Republicans from power, using means both legitimate and illegitimate. In the Piney Woods, where whites constituted a majority of voters, Democrats quickly regained a modicum of political control. Pike County elected all Democratic legislators to represent them in Jackson after 1871. Perry County elected former Confederate officer J.P. Carter, a conservative Democrat, to the state legislature in 1865. He served there until 1867. After a six-year hiatus, Carter returned to the legislature and served from 1874 to 1880. Former Confederate officer Thomas J. Hardy, brother of William H. Hardy, represented Covington, Jones, Smith, and Wayne counties as state senator from 1870 to 1874. When legitimate elections failed, groups such as the BASKETS AT LAUREN ROGERS MUSEUM Catherine Marshall Gardiner, the great aunt of Lauren Rogers and wife of one of Laurel’s founders, collected baskets for around fifty years during her travels throughout the world and friendships developed with tribal weavers and collectors. Her donation of over 500 items to the museum was considered at the time to be one of the most extensive collections of North American Native baskets. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LAUREN ROGERS MUSEUM OF ART