ois congressman published a letter in a St. Paul paper attacking
Donnelly's personal character. Believing this to be part of the campaign
against him, the choleric Minnesotan replied in the house with a
remarkable rhetorical display which greatly entertained the members
but did not increase their respect for him. His opponents at home made
effective use of this affair, and the outcome of the contest was a
divided convention, the nomination of two Republicans, each claiming to
be the regular candidate of the party, and the ultimate election of a
Democrat.

Donnelly was soon ready to break with the old guard of the Republican
party in national as well as in state politics. In 1870 he ran for
Congress as an independent Republican on a low tariff platform but was
defeated in spite of the fact that he received the endorsement of the
Democratic convention. Two years later he joined the Liberal Republicans
in supporting Greeley against Grant. When the farmers' Granges began
to spring up like mushrooms in 1873, Donnelly was quick to see the
political possibilities of the movement. He conducted an extensive
correspondence with farmers, editors, and politicians of radical
tendencies all over the State and played a leading part in the
organization of the Anti-Monopoly party. He was elected to the state
senate in 1873, and in the following year he started a newspaper, the
Anti-Monopolist, to serve as the organ of the movement.

Although Donnelly was technically still a farmer, he was quite content
to leave the management of his farm to his capable wife, while he made
politics his profession, with literature and lecturing as avocations.
His frequent and brilliant lectures no less than his voluminous
writings* attest his amazing industry. Democrat, Republican,
Liberal-Republican, and Anti-Monopolist; speculator, lawyer, farmer,
lecturer, stump-speaker, editor, and author; preacher of morals and
practicer of shrewd political evasions; and always a radical--he was for
many years a force to be reckoned with in the politics of his State and
of the nation.

* The Great Cryptogram, for instance, devotes a thousand
pages to proving a Bacon cipher in the plays of Shakespeare!

CHAPTER IV. CURBING THE RAILROADS

Though the society of the Patrons of Husbandry was avowedly
non-political in character, there is ample justification for the use of
the term "Granger" in connection with the radical railroad legislation
enacted in