the pending canvass in Ohio, which involved his re-election
as governor. In the condition of the Senate I did not feel justified
in leaving, but immediately upon the passage of the repeal bill
started for Columbus to render such service as I could. It had
been falsely stated that I was indifferent about McKinley's election,
which I promptly denied. But a few days intervened before the
election. On the day of my arrival in Ohio, I spoke at Springfield.
On the evening of the next day, the 3rd of November, at Central
Turner Hall in Cincinnati, I spoke to a very large meeting. This
speech was fully reported. It was mostly devoted to the tariff,
a struggle over which was anticipated. After paying my usual visit
to the chamber of commerce and the Lincoln club, I proceeded to
Toledo, where I spoke at Memorial Hall on the evening before the
election, and then returned home to Mansfield, where I voted. The
result was even more decisive than expected. The 81,000 plurality
for McKinley was the best evidence of his popularity, and was
regarded as an indorsement of the McKinley tariff law.

On the 8th of November I returned to Washington. Many interviews
with me were reported, in which I expressed my satisfaction with
the overwhelming victory gained by the Republicans all over the
United States, and especially with their success in New York. In
response to a request by a leading journal, before the meeting of
Congress, I carefully prepared a statement of the causes that led
to these results. I undertook to review the political changes in
the past four years, but will insert only two paragraphs of this
paper.

"It is manifest that the causes of the defeat of the Democratic
party in the recent election were general and not local. They
extended to Colorado, Dakota, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York,
and Massachusetts. If the opposition to the Democratic party in
Virginia had been organized and conducted by the Republican party,
the results in that state would have been very different. The
ideas of the Populists are too visionary and impracticable to be
made the basis of a political organization. A canvass conducted
in Virginia upon the issues that prevailed in Ohio would, in my
judgment, have greatly changed the results in that state. Aside
from the memories of the war, the economic principles of the
Republican party have great strength in the southern states, and
whenever the images of the war fade away the people