His friends were again on the war-path and the shadow of the chief executive office of the State was now beginning to fall across his pathway. He says:
"It would require volumes to record the transactions of these Legislatures, and of my humble labors in them; but it was my course of conduct in these two sessions of the General Assembly that induced my friends, without any solicitation on my part, to offer me as a candidate for Governor. I was urged not by politicians, but by reasonable and reflecting men, more to advance the interest of the State than my own."
If we did not, from his own lips, know how the Judge loathed "the arts of politicians," we might almost be tempted to conclude from the following that he was one of them:
"I traversed every section of the State, and knew well the people. My friends had the utmost confidence in my knowledge of the people, and when I suggested any policy to be observed, this suggestion was consequently carried out as I requested—thus placing all under one leader."
This, it will be remembered, was in 1830, and neither Reynolds nor Kinney, his competitor, had received a party nomination. Both were of the same party, Kinney being a strong Jackson man of the ultra type, and the Judge only a "plain, humble, reflecting Jackson man."
At one time during the campaign it seemed as if there were real danger of this candidate of the "reflecting men of the State" actually falling into the ways and wiles of politicians. "I often addressed the people in churches, in courthouses, and in the open air, myself occupying literally the stump of a large tree; at times also in a grocery."
The fiery and abusive hand-bills against his competitor he did not attempt to restrain his friends from circulating, "as they had a right to exercise their own judgment"; but he declares he did not circulate one himself. He moreover felicitates himself upon the fact that his conciliatory course gained him votes.
This noted contest lasted eighteen months, as Reynolds says, and, the State being sparsely populated, he enjoyed the personal acquaintance of almost every voter. The fact, as he further states, that his opponent was a clergyman, was a great drawback to him, and almost all the Christian sects, except his own—the anti-missionary Baptists— opposed him. With a candor that does him credit, the Judge admits "the support of the religious people was not so much for me, but against him."
No national issues were discussed, but one point urged by Kinney against the proposed Michigan canal was, "that it would flood the country with Yankees." It would be a great mistake to suppose that Reynolds himself wholly escaped vituperation. On the contrary, he claims the credit of being "the best abused man in the State." He relates that one of the stories told on him was, "that I saw a scarecrow, the effigy of a man in a corn-field, just at dusk, and that I said, 'How are you, my friend? Won't you take some of my hand bills to distribute?'"
Some light is shed on the politics of the good old days of our fathers by the following: "The party rancor in the campaign raged so high that neighborhoods fell out with one another, and the angry and bitter feelings entered into the common transactions of life."