Half a Century

by Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

CHAPTER XLI.

STATE AND NATIONAL 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 State ticket was elected, with Gov. Ramsey at its head, and he was the first Governor to tender troops to President Lincoln for the suppression of the Rebellion. The result was gratifying, although our own county, Stearns, was overwhelmingly Democratic, and must remain so, since the great mass of the people were Catholics.

However, the election of the State ticket was largely due to the personal popularity of Gov. Ramsey, and this could not be depended upon for a lasting arrangement, so I spent the winter following lecturing through the State, sowing seed for the coming presidential campaign. I never spoke in public during an election excitement, never advocated on the platform the claims of any particular man, but urged general principles.

Stephen Miller was our St. Cloud delegate to the Chicago Convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln, led the canvass in the State, as the most efficient speaker and was chairman of the Electoral College. His prominent position in the Border Ruffian war added largely to his popularity in the State, and once more that little printing office under the grand old trees was plunged into politics; this time into an election on which hung the destinies of the nation. How that election was carried on in other States I know not, but in Minnesota the banner of Republicanism and human freedom was borne aloft over a well fought field. There was not much surface work. Men struggled for the Right against the old despotism of Might, and planted their cause on foundations more enduring than Minnesota granite itself.

Yet, even then, the opposition of the Garrisonians was most persistent. There was a large anti-slavery element among the original settlers of Minnesota, but it was mostly of the Garrisonian or non-voting type, and had lain dormant under pro-slavery rule. To utilize this element at the polls was my special desire. The ground occupied by them was the one I had abandoned, i.e., the ground made by the Covenanters when the Constitution first appeared. They pronounced it "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and would not vote or hold office under it; would not take an oath to support it. So firmly had Garrison planted himself on the old Covenanter platform, that it is doubtful whether he labored harder for the overthrow of slavery or political anti-slavery; whether he more fiercely denounced slave-holders or men who voted against slave-holding. Once after a "flaming" denunciation of political abolitionists, some one said to him:

"Mr. Garrison, I am surprised at the ground you take! Do you not think
James G. Birney and Gerrit Smith are anti-slavery?"

He hesitated, and replied:

"They have anti-slavery tendencies, I admit."

Now, James G. Birney, when a young man, fell heir to the third of an Alabama estate, and arranged with the other heirs to take the slaves as his portion. He took them all into a free State, emancipated them, and left himself without a dollar, but went to work and became the leader of political abolitionists, while Gerrit Smith devoted his splendid talents and immense wealth to the cause of the slave. When their mode of action was so reprehensible to Mr. Garrison, we may judge the strength of his opposition to that plan of action which resulted in the overthrow of slavery. His non-resistance covered ballots as well as bullets, and slavery, the creation of brute force and ballots, must not be attacked by any weapon, save moral suasion. So it was, that Garrisonianism, off the line of the underground railroad, was a rather harmless foe to slavery, and was often used by it to prevent the casting of votes which would endanger its power.

From the action of the slave power, it must by that time have been apparent to all, that adverse votes was what it most dreaded; but old-side Covenanters, Quakers, and Garrisonians could not cast these without soiling their hands by touching that bad Constitution. But that moral dilettanteism, which thinks first of its own hands, was not confined to non-voting abolitionists; for the "thorough goers" of the old Liberty Party, could not come down from their perch on platforms which embraced all the moralities, to work on one which only said to slavery "not another foot of territory."

Both these parties attacked me. The one argued that I, of necessity, endorsed slavery every where by recognizing the Constitution; the other that I must favor its existence where it then was, by working with the Republican party, which was only pledged to prevent its extension. To me, these positions seemed utterly untenable, their arguments preposterous, and I did my best to make this appear. I claimed the Constitution as anti-slavery, and taught the duty of overthrowing slavery by and through it, but no argument which I used did half the service of an illustration which came to me:

I had a little garden in which the weeds did grow, and little Bobbie Miller had a little broken hoe. When I went into my garden to cut the weeds away, I took up Bobbie's little hoe to help me in the fray. If that little hoe were wanting, I'd take a spoon or fork, or any other implement, but always keep at work. If any one would send me a broader, sharper hoe, I'd use it on those ugly weeds and cut more with one blow; but till I got a better hoe, I'd work away with Bobbie's. I'd ride one steady-going nag, and not a dozen hobbies; help any man or boy, or fiend to do what needed doing, and only stop when work came up which done would call for ruing.

This conceit struck popular fancy as plain argument could not have done, and the Republican party came to be called "Robbie Miller's Hoe "—an imperfect means of reaching a great end, and one that any one might use without becoming responsible for its imperfections.

During the heat of that Lincoln campaign, Galusha A. Grow, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, came to St. Cloud to speak, and found me ill with quinsy; but I went to the meeting. It was held in Wilson's Hall, which was on the second floor of a frame building, and was so packed that before he began fears were felt lest the floors should give way. But the speaker told the audience that the floor would "hold still" if they did; and any one who felt uneasy had better leave now. No one left, and for two hours and a half he held that packed assembly in close and silent attention. He was very popular on the frontier on account of his homestead bill, yet the hall was surrounded all the time he spoke by a howling Democratic mob, who hurled stones against the house, fired guns, shouted and yelled, trying to drown his voice. To make it more interesting and try to draw out the audience, they made a huge bonfire and burned me in effigy as—

"The mother of the Republican party."

The result of that campaign is known, for in it Minnesota was made so thoroughly Republican that the party must needs split, in order to got rid of its supremacy.