REPUBLICANISM IN KANSAS.
Speech delivered at Topeka, September 15, 1886.
Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: The campaign in Kansas this year is what is called an “off-year” contest. The intense enthusiasm, the fierce excitement, the great processions, with flags and banners and music and resounding hurrahs; the marvelous interest, dwarfing and absorbing all other concerns, and even paralyzing for months the every-day business pursuits and industries of the people—all these will be wanting in the campaign of 1886. And yet the interests involved in the election that will be held in November next are as momentous, and the issues depending on its result are quite as important to the State, as were the interests and issues depending upon the result at the ballot-box in 1884. The one officer who was to be elected then, and is not to be chosen now, was the President. We are to choose, in November next, as we did two years ago, a full board of State officers, seven Congressmen, a State Legislature, a Judge of the Supreme Court, and nearly half of our county officers. We are to elect men who will make our laws, National and State, as well as men who will execute our State laws. And as good local government really concerns each individual citizen far more than do the acts of the President, because it touches each and every citizen more directly, it has always seemed to me that the people, if they have a proper regard for their own interests, ought to regard the “off-year” elections with quite as deep interest, if not more anxious solicitude, than they do the choice of a President.