oic conduct by colored settlers worthy of the highest praise. Many
of them, emigrants from other Southern States, seeking better
conditions, and arriving with barely sufficient to pay entrance fee, and
nothing to sustain them in their fight with nature to clear their
heavily-wooded land and fit it for cultivation. Hiring to others for
brief spells, as necessity compelled them, to obtain small stocks of
food and tools, five years after entrance, when they proved up their
holdings and got their deeds, found them in comfortable log or frame
houses of two or more rooms; sheds, with a cow, calves, swine, and
poultry, and ten or more acres under cultivation, according to the
number and availability of labor in their families. And, best of all,
better than the mere knowledge of success, themselves crowned with that
pride of great achievement ever and only the result of rigid self-denial
and incessant toil.

In the National Republican Convention held at Chicago, June, 1880, was a
contest that will be ever memorable as pertaining to a third term for
the Presidency.

Landing at San Francisco, September, 1879, from his tour of two years
around the world, and the honored guest of the crowned heads of Europe,
General Grant's travel through the States was a continued ovation. On
his arrival at Little Rock, Ark., citizens from all over the State
hastened to do him honor, culminating with a banquet at the Capitol
Hotel. The gathering was democratic in the best sense of that word,
political lines were erased, Republicans and Democrats vieing with each
other in giving the distinguished man a fitting reception. Nor were
social lines adhered to, the writer being a guest and responding to the
toast "The Possibilities of American Citizenship."

At the Arkansas Republican State Convention in 1880 I was elected a
delegate to the National Convention of June 2 of that year. As a memento
I highly prize my bronze medal proclaiming me as one of the historic
"306" that never surrendered--compact and erect, "with every gun shotted
and every banner flying," went down with General Grant in an
unsuccessful effort to nominate him for a third term. It was there that
Roscoe Conkling made the nominating speech in behalf of the General that
will live in history, stirring the hearts of the immense audience to a
climax of patriotic fervor. When he said, "Should you ask from whence he
comes, the answer it shall be, He comes from Appomattox and the famous
app