The Senate parties had been competitive since the 1870s, but, in the early 1890s, the intensity of competition was exacerbated by the waning battle by Republicans to secure voting rights for Black men in the South. The Federal Elections Bill of 1890–91 represented the last attempt, for the next two-thirds of a century, to protect the right to vote. Chapter 5 examines this battle and its transformative impact on the Senate. Faced with the prospect of reenfranchised Black voters, an overwhelmingly Republican group, and thus the end of Democratic hegemony in the South, Senate Democrats regarded the battle against the bill as an existential fight. Leading them in battle was Arthur Pue Gorman (D, Md.), who, in the process of defeating the Federal Elections Bill, honed the filibuster as a weapon of minority obstruction and transformed the position of caucus chairman, at least for the minority Democratic party, into a position of elected floor leadership. Modern party leadership in the Senate, we show, traces its birth to Gorman and to this battle.