s and formidable, and in every
contest were reinforced by the politicians of the State. Although
the ranks of my supporters were constantly recruited and no man
ever had more devoted friends, I was obliged, during all these
years, to stand alone as the champion of my cause in debate. I
believe no Congressional district in the Union was ever the theatre
of so much hard toil by a single man; but although it involved the
serious abridgement of health and life, the ruinous neglect of my
private affairs, and the sacrifice of many precious friendships,
I was not without my reward. I succeeded in my work. Step by step
I saw my constituents march up to my position, and the district at
last completely disenthralled by the ceaseless and faithful
administration of anti-slavery truth. The tables were completely
turned. Almost everybody was an Abolitionist, and nobody any longer
made a business of swearing that he was not. In canvassing my
district it became the regular order of business for a caravan of
candidates for minor offices, who were sportively called the "side
show," to follow me from point to point, all vying with each other
as to which had served longest and most faithfully as my friends.
They had always been opposed to slavery, and men who had taken the
lead in mobbing Abolitionists in earlier days and gained a livelihood
by slave-catching, were now active and zealous leaders in the
Republican party. It was a marvelous change. Slavery itself,
greatly to the surprise and delight of its enemies, had perished;
but it was, after all, only one form of a world-wide evil. The
abolition of the chattel slavery of the Southern negro was simply
the introduction and prelude to the emancipation of all races from
all forms of servitude, and my Congressional record had been a
practical illustration of my faith in this truth. The rights of
man are sacred, whether trampled down by Southern slave-drivers,
the monopolists of the soil, the grinding power of corporate wealth,
the legalized robbery of a protective tariff, or the power of
concentrated capital in alliance with labor-saving machinery.

During the winter preceding the inauguration of the President I
was besieged by place-hunters more than ever before. They thronged
about me constantly, while I generally wrote from twenty to thirty
letters per day in response to inquiries about appointments from
my district. The squabbles over post-office appointments were by
far t