I proposed to lead and reform it, not to follow and fall in behind
the selfish and short-sighted time servers who thought the people had
learned nothing and forgot nothing; and instant upon finding myself
in the saddle I sought to ride down the mass of ignorance which was
at least for the time being mainly what I had to look to for a
constituency.

Mr. Prentice, who knew the lay of the ground better than I did, advised
against it. The personal risk counted for something. Very early in
the action I made a direct fighting issue, which--the combat
interdicted--gave me the opportunity to declare--with something of the
bully in the tone--that I might not be able to hit a barn door at
ten paces, but could shoot with any man in Kentucky across a pocket
handkerchief, holding myself at all times answerable and accessible.
I had a fairly good fighting record in the army and it was not doubted
that I meant what I said.

But it proved a bitter, hard, uphill struggle, for a long while against
odds, before negro testimony was carried. A generation of politicians
were sent to the rear. Finally, in 1876, a Democratic State Convention
put its mark upon me as a Democrat by appointing me a Delegate at large
to the National Democratic Convention of that year called to meet at St.
Louis to put a Presidential ticket in the field.

The Courier-Journal having come to represent all three of the English
dailies of the city the public began to rebel. It could not see that
instead of three newspapers of the third or fourth class Louisville was
given one newspaper of the first class; that instead of dividing the
local patronage in three inadequate portions, wasted upon a triple
competition, this patronage was combined, enabling the one newspaper to
engage in a more equal competition with the newspapers of such rival
and larger cities as Cincinnati and St. Louis; and that one of the
contracting parties needing an editor, the other a publisher, in coming
together the two were able to put their trained faculties to the best
account.

Nevertheless, during thirty-five years Mr. Haldeman and I labored side
by side, not the least difference having arisen between us. The attacks
to which we were subjected from time to time drew us together the
closer. These attacks were sometimes irritating and sometimes comical,
but they had one characteristic feature: Each started out apparently
under a high state of excitement. Each seemed to have some profound
c