POLITICS.

When _The St. Cloud Democrat_ began its career as the organ of the
Republican party in Northern Minnesota, the central and southern
portions of the State were fairly supplied with republican papers, the
conductors all being more or less skillful in the art of plowing and
sowing the political field; but with no very bright prospect of
harvesting a victory. Under the Lowrie dictatorship of the North, it is
difficult to see how the success of a Republican could have been made
possible, any more than giving the electoral vote of Southern Republican
States to the Republican candidate in 1880.

To overthrow that dictatorship was the work I had volunteered to do, and
in doing it, my plan was to "plow deep," subsoil to the beam. Preachers
held men accountable to God for their Sunday services, but it was my aim
to urge the divine claim to obedience, all the rest of the week. I held
that election day was of all others, the Lord's day. He instituted the
first republic. All the training which Moses gave the Jews was to fit
them for self-government, and at his death the choice of their rulers
was left with them and they were commanded to

"Choose men, fearing God and hating covetousness,
and set them to rule over you."

For no creed, no form of worship, no act of his life, is a man more
directly responsible to God, than for casting his vote or the
non-fulfillment of that duty. When the nominations were made for the
second State election in 1859, Gen. Lowrie had lost ground so fast that
he needed the indorsement of his party. This was given in his nomination
for Lieut. Governor. The Republicans nominated Ignatius Donnelly, a
fiery young orator, who took the stump, and was not deterred by any
super-refinement from making the most of his opponent's reputation as
the stealthy destroyer of a printing office, because he had made a bad
bargain in buying its editor. He and the party which had made his
methods its own by nominating him, were held up to the most unmerciful
ridicule. The canvass seemed to turn on the indorsement or repudiation
of border-ruffianism, press-breaking, woman-mobbing. My _personnel_ had
then become familiar to the people of the State, and the large man who
instituted a mob to suppress a woman of my size, and then failed, was
not a suitable leader for American men, even if they were Democrats.

The death-knell of Democratic rule in Minnesota was rung in that
election. The whole Republican St