kept many black and Republican voters from going to the state's polls in a fraud-wrought election, using armed violence. This resulted in the Democrats gaining control of the Mississippi Legislature. With the ascension of Rutherford B. Hayes to the U.S. presidency and the subsequent Compromise of 1877, a Southern Democrat was appointed to the U.S. cabinet and the U.S. Army's forces were withdrawn from public and confined to their bases, leaving 1,155 soldiers by 1879. This effectively removed the last obstacle preventing the Democrats from violently taking over said states and disenfranchising African American voters and marked the effective end of the Republican Party in the states of the former Confederacy for nearly a century. The state government of Mississippi, now controlled mostly by the Democrats, decided to bring to an end their campaigns of terrorist violence designed to disenfranchise the black voting population of the state, by using other methods to do so. However, rather than using solely terrorism to disenfranchise black voters and their white allies, the Democrats decided to use the law to do so, by enshrining into the state constitutions provisions that would allow them to do just that. They set their sights on replacing the 1868 constitution of Mississippi, which legally guaranteed freedoms, citizenship, enfranchisement and other human rights to black citizens, to which both Northern and Southern Democrats were vehemently opposed. Original frame The organization of the current Mississippi Constitution is laid out in a Preamble and 15 Articles. Each Article is subdivided into Sections. However, the Section numbering does not restart between Articles; Sections 1 and 2 are in Article 1 while Article 2 began with Section 3 (since repealed). As such, newly added Sections are given alpha characters after the number (such as Section 26A in Article 3) Preamble Article 1 Article 1 defines the separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial. Article 2 Article 2 formerly defined the state boundaries; after the 1990 repeal of section 3, the legislature holds the power to define the state boundaries. Article 3 Most of the rights defined in Article 3 are identical to the rights to those that are found in the United States Bill of Rights. Unique additions to the 1890 Mississippi constitution include Section 7 (denying the state the ability to secede from the United States, carried over from the 1868 constitution), Section 12 (explicitly permitting regulation of concealed carry weapons,