Led by James Z. George and L.Q.C Lamar, Mississippi Democrats made plans to drive the local Republicans from office. The plan was to lure freedman with promises of protected civil rights and to threaten those who remained faithful to the Republicans. By the summer of 1875 the Democrats had created extralegal militias to encourage conversion by means of violence and intimidation. This followed the violence of December 21, 1874 in Vicksburg, which had prompted President Grant to send troops. Although the violence of the Mississippi Plan would not create great amounts of national attention, it did allow Mississippi democrats to install the first democratic government in a state that was a majority Black after the Civil War, and the only state to do so under Grant's Presidency.