the
nation's life depended on its fidelity to the war traditions and on the
principle of protection to American industries.

Its orators waved the bloody shirt to keep the party together, though
each election placed the war and its issues farther into the background
of history, and an increasing number of people deprecated the action of
fanning smouldering embers into flame again. Iowa and Kansas and
Nebraska were Stalwarts of the Stalwart. Kansas was the battle-ground
of the old Abolition and Free Soil forces, and their traditions kept
alive a love and reverence for the Republican party long after its real
leaders had passed away, and long after it had ceased to be the party
of the people.

Iowa was hopelessly Republican, also. A strong force in the Rebellion,
dominated by New England thought, its industries predominantly
agricultural, it held rigidly to its Republicanism, and trained its
young men to believe that, while "all Democrats were not thieves, all
thieves were Democrats," and, when pressed to the wall, admitted,
reluctantly, that there were "_some_ good men among the Democrats."

In the fall of Bradley's last year at Iowa City, another presidential
campaign was coming on, but few men considered that there was any
change impending. Local fights really supplied the incitement to action
among the Republican leaders. There was no statement of a general
principle, no discussion of economic issues by their political leaders.
They carefully avoided anything like a discussion of the real condition
of the people.

Rock County had been the banner Republican county. For years the
Democrats of Rock County had met in annual convention to nominate a
ticket which they had not the slightest expectation of electing. There
was something pathetic in the habit. It was not faith--it was a sort of
desperation; and yet the Republicans as regularly had their joke about
it, regardless of the pathos presented in the action of a body of men
thus fighting a forlorn and hopeless battle. Each year some
old-fashioned Democrat dropped away into the grave, and yet the remnant
met and nominated a complete ticket, and voted for it solemnly, even
religiously.

The young Republicans of the county called this remnant "Free traders"
and "Copperheads," exactly as if the terms were synonymous. The
Republican boys of the country felt that there was something
mysteriously uncanny in the term "Free Trader" (and always associated
"Copperhead" wi