d be elected. I still think he owed his election,
and Harrison his defeat, to the Homestead riots of the midsummer, which
transferred the labor vote bodily from the Republicans to the Democrats.
Mainly on account of this belief I opposed his nomination that year.

In the Kentucky State Convention I made my opposition resonant, if
not effective. "I understand," I said in an address to the assembled
delegates, "that you are all for Grover Cleveland?"

There came an affirmative roar.

"Well," I continued, "I am not, and if you send me to the National
Convention I will not vote for his nomination, if his be the only name
presented, because I firmly believe that his nomination will mean the
marching through a slaughter-house to an open grave, and I refuse to be
party to such a folly."

The answer of the convention was my appointment by acclamation, but it
was many a day before I heard the last of my unlucky figure of speech.

Notwithstanding this splendid indorsement, I went to the National
Convention feeling very like the traditional "poor boy at a frolic." All
seemed to me lost save honor and conviction. I had become the embodiment
of my own epigram, "a tariff for revenue only." Mr. Cleveland, in the
beginning very much taken by it, had grown first lukewarm and then
frightened. His "Free Trade" message of 1887 had been regarded by the
party as an answering voice. But I knew better.

In the national platform, over the protest of Whitney, his organizer,
and Vilas, his spokesman, I had forced him to stand on that gospel.
He flew into a rage and threatened to modify, if not to repudiate, the
plank in his letter of acceptance. We were still on friendly terms and,
upon reaching home, I wrote him the following letter. It reads like
ancient history, but, as the quarrel which followed cut a certain figure
in the political chronicle of the time, the correspondence may not be
historically out of date, or biographically uninteresting:

II

MR. WATTERSON TO MR. CLEVELAND

Courier-Journal Office, Louisville, July 9, 1892.--My Dear
Mr. President: I inclose you two editorial articles from the
Courier-Journal, and, that their spirit and purpose may not be
misunderstood by you, I wish to add a word or two of a kind directly and
entirely personal.

To a man of your robust understanding and strong will, opposition and
criticism are apt to be taken as more or less unfriendly; and, as you
are at present advised, I can hardly e