“John W. Kern in his speech at the German meeting on Monday night condemned in unmeasured terms the man or party that sympathized with Louis Napoleon. His sympathies were with the Prussians all the time. On that question John is right, but many of his party are against him.”
That the youth with all his enthusiasm possessed an abundance of practical political judgment may be assumed from the fact that he took cognizance of the overwhelming Republican majority in refusing to make his fight along strictly party lines, refrained from mentioning the parties by name, and devoted himself exclusively to the reform issue. This policy from which he refused to be diverted by the gray beards of the Republican party soon got on the nerves of the Republican organ, which was moved to say:
“John W. Kern is not a party man now. Oh, no! But he was nominated by a convention called by the chairman of the Democratic county committee. He will vote for Henderson for congress, and if sent to the legislature for Voorhees for senator. But he ignores party! Such thin sophistry will make a fool of no one.”
And again we find the same fearsome note struck:
“Kern doesn’t want the voters of the county to allow Wildman, Jay, or Phillips to dictate how they shall vote, but he wants to do the dictating. John has put himself in the belly of the Trojan horse. As soon as he shall get himself inside the walls of the city he will turn himself loose.”
Meanwhile the editor of The Tribune and Kirkpatrick seemed to feel in need of all possible help and the Republican organ contained numerous attacks on the boy candidate under the caption “Communicated.” In one of these the writer described Kern as “a young lawyer with a reputation for two things—making smart speeches and smoking cigars”—a reputation he lived up to throughout his life.
He closed the campaign at Alto to an audience of his boyhood friends, and if The Tribune is to be credited followed this later in the night on the streets of Kokomo with “a bitter partisan speech.”
The election resulted in his defeat by so small a margin that The Tribune editorially confessed its chagrin. It is to be presumed that he carried out his wager with Tony Jay, a Kokomo packer, and blacked that worthy’s boots on the street in front of the Clinton House—the leading hostelry of the town.
The campaign had firmly established his reputation as a very young man with a very old and level head, possessed of eloquence, tact, political judgment, and all the elements of leadership. And this before he was of age! Living as he was to do throughout his life in Republican communities he was not to attain the goal of his ambition until late in life, but had he lived in England and been thus equipped he would probably have entered parliament like Fox and Pitt as a mere boy and gone far.