litary company and picketed the
hills about our town day and night against a raid from the Southenders;
and, having stirred public passion deeply, he turned his pickets loose
on the morning of election day to set prairie fires all over the south
end of the county to harass the settlers who might vote for the rival
town and keep them away from the polls fighting fire.

Our people won; "the hell-hounds of disorder and anarchy"--as Judge
Balderson called the rival townspeople--were "rebuked by the stern hand
of a just and terrible Providence." Balderson was a hero, and our people
sent him to the legislature. "Aunt" Martha added:

"He went to Topeka in his blue soldier clothes, his campaign hat, and
brass buttons; but he came back, at the first recess, in diamonds and
fine linen, and the town sniffed a little." Having learned this much of
Balderson our office became interested in him, and a reporter was set to
work to look up Balderson. The reporter found that according to Wilder's
"Annals," Balderson hustled himself into the chairmanship of the
railroad committee and became a power in the State. The next time
Colonel "Alphabetical" Morrison came to the office he was asked for
further details about Balderson. The Colonel told us that when the
legislature finally adjourned, very proud and very drunk, in the bedlam
of the closing hours, Judge Balderson mounted a desk, waved the Stars
and Stripes, and told of the Battle of Look Out Mountain. Colonel
Morrison chuckled as he added: "The next day the _State Journal_ printed
his picture--the one with the slouching cap, the military moustache, the
fierce goatee, and the devil-may-care cape--and referred to the judge as
'the silver-tongued orator of the Cottonwood,' a title which began to
amuse the fellows around town."

Naturally he was a candidate for Congress. Colonel Morrison says that
Balderson became familiarly known in State politics as Little Baldy,
and was in demand at soldiers' meetings and posed as the soldier's
friend.

Wilder's "Annals" records the fact that Balderson failed to go to
Congress, but went to the State Senate. He waxed fat. We learned that he
bought a private bank and all the books recording abstracts of title to
land in his county, and that he affected a high silk hat when he went to
Chicago, while his townsmen were inclined to eye him askance. The lack
of three votes from his home precinct kept him from being nominated
lieutenant-governor by his party