The body lobbied for increased regulation of railroads, uniform interest rates, and additional reforms aimed at ameliorating the agricultural economy.
[1] Some leading North Carolina Republicans, such as Daniel L. Russell and John James Mott, endorsed Alliance proposals to create a commission to oversee the railroads, but such efforts had been rejected by Democratic leaders.
In an 1889 article in the Raleigh Signal, an anonymous correspondent suggested that Republican and Alliance members join together to break the Democrats' dominance of state institutions.
[6] At first Marion Butler and many other Alliance leaders refused to join the Populists, advocating continued cooperation with the North Carolina Democratic Party.
One faction, the radical Fusionists led by Russell, favored cooperation and combined electoral tickets with the Populists at all levels of government—including the presidential election—and backed free silver.
A conservative faction, led by Henry P. Cheatham and John C. Dancy, favored a straight Republican ticket and opposed Russell for insulting blacks in previous years by supporting lily-white ideas.
They also distrusted the Populists, fearing that relying on them would disenchant upper middle class and wealthy whites who had hitherto been the chief protectors of blacks' civil rights.
He feared the Republicans wanted a compromise largely on their own terms which might allow for gold standard supporters to be on a combined ticket and thus ruin the Populists' biggest political issue.
Russel continued to urge local Republican chapters to send Fusionist delegates to the upcoming state party convention, while the Populists evaluated their chances of gaining direct black electoral support.