Tillman believed, and often stated as senator, that blacks must submit to either white domination or extermination. He was reluctant to undertake the latter, fearing hundreds of whites would die accomplishing it. He campaigned in the violent 1898 North Carolina elections, in which white Democrats were determined to take back control from a biracial Populist-Republican coalition elected in 1894 and 1896 on a fusion ticket. He spoke widely in North Carolina in late 1898, often to crowds wearing red shirts, disheartening his Populist supporters. On October 20, 1898, Tillman was the featured speaker at the Democratic Party's Great White Man's Rally and Basket Picnic in Fayetteville. Tillman spoke furiously to the crowd of white men, asking them why North Carolina had not rid itself of black office holders as South Carolina had in 1876. He chastized the audience for not lynching Alex Manly, the black editor of the Wilmington "Daily Record". Tillman was one of many prominent Democrats advocating use of violence to win the 1898 election. The resulting coup expelled opposition black and white political leaders from Wilmington, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the Civil War, including the only black newspaper in the city, and killed an estimated 60 to more than 300 people. Terror and intimidation again won the day for the Democrats, who were elected statewide. South Carolina saw violence as well: an effort to register black voters in Phoenix led whites to provoke a confrontation, after which a number of African Americans were murdered. Tillman warned African Americans and those who might combine with them that black political activism would provoke a murderous response from whites.