If any further evidence were necessary to establish the fact that during the time he was reporter of the supreme court he was looked upon in many quarters as the future leader of the party, two cards that appeared in The Indianapolis Sentinel at the time would surely suffice. These cards are important to our purpose in establishing Kern’s status between 1885 and 1889. An “Indianapolis attorney” wrote:
“If the Democrats intend to push young men to the front for the governorship and party leadership, what is the matter with John W. Kern, reporter of the supreme court? He is the man whom the late Vice-President Hendricks once referred to as ‘one of the rising Democratic leaders of Indiana.’ At the last election he received a larger popular vote than any man on the state ticket except Judge Mitchell, who had the additional support of the Greenbackers, and he even got a larger majority than the latter. Then there is no man in the state who comes nearer being the political idol of the young democracy, and I know of hundreds of young Republicans who would support him for any position to which he might aspire. No one can say that John Kern can’t make a speech; there is not a public talker in the state who can arouse the ‘boys’ in a speech more completely than he; and then he has brains enough to fill any position; is shrewd enough for a manager, and no one has more personal friends.”
The following day another card appeared from “An Old-Style Democrat.”
“Your talk from an Indianapolis attorney made me a little zealous. While it is true that ‘John W. Kern is the idol of the young democracy of the state,’ he is no less a favorite of us old Democrats. He is young, able and progressive, just such a man as we need. John W. Kern is a born leader. To be sure he is young, but he has got a mighty old head on him, and it will be seen that he don’t need much pushing to get to the front.”
I am indebted to Dr. E. E. Quivey of Fort Wayne for some interesting recollections of the Kern of the eighties. In the campaign of 1884 he was a member of a Democratic quartette which was sent over the state with various orators, and for three weeks the quartette accompanied Kern. Any one knowing him in the latter years of his life will find in these reminiscences a striking likeness to the man they knew. His charm of manner, courtesy, thoughtfulness, simplicity and democracy of bearing are prominently featured in Doctor Quivey’s recollections:
“At this time Mr. Kern was a comparatively young man and not widely known in Indiana outside the confines of his own district. He was very slender and in the long frock coat of the period seemed much taller than when I saw him years afterward. He had an abundance of hair which was almost black and which he wore rather long, but always neatly trimmed about the edges. His face was rather pale and already lines were graven on his forehead and about the eyes, which, together with heavy eyebrows, gave an expression of austerity which wholly belied his nature. Although an indefatigable worker he was not a rugged man, and was therefore very careful of his physical welfare, using every precaution to forestall some seemingly ever-impending illness. While I am sure that he had many hours of physical discomfort, he never even intimated that he was not in the best of health.
“Wherever he appeared he made a profound impression by his fluent speech and the compelling force of his logic. He seldom embellished his thoughts with figurative language, and his speeches were entirely devoid of verbosity; his power seemed to lie in the earnest, lucid simplicity of his appeal. He never sought to please the fancy of his auditors by lofty flights of oratory, nor did he indulge in any of the tricks that crafty orators employ for applause. Indeed applause seemed more disconcerting than pleasing to him.
“He was by far the most approachable public man we had encountered. The distant, awe-inspiring characteristics of some of the other speakers were wholly foreign to his nature.
“Mr. Kern’s humanity was made evident on several occasions, but the following incident will suffice to show that he possessed this ennobling quality to a very marked degree. It was at Monticello, if my memory serves me rightly, that one of the boys had an acute attack of indigestion and he was violently sick for a few hours. Mr. Kern did not know it until it was time to leave for the meeting; and when told that Carlston was ill, disappointment and alarm were expressed on his face as he said, ‘Where is he? Take me to him.’ He was shown to Carlston’s room, which was indeed a cheerless one, and after a quick survey of the surroundings he said, ‘This won’t do; we can not leave him here.’ And he insisted that he be transferred to a warm and cheerful room, that a physician be summoned at once, and that some one be secured to stay with him during our absence. Nor would he go to the meeting, despite the impatient entreaties of the committee to ‘hurry up,’ until every detail for Carlston’s comfort had been completed.
“An amusing incident happened on the day following which revealed a phase of Mr. Kern’s character not often brought to the surface. Under no consideration would he deliberately offer offense to any one, and he was inclined to let personal incivilities go unrebuked and apparently unnoticed. Yet when goaded to retaliation he was equal to any emergency. It seems that some of the Republican papers were claiming that William H. Calkins had challenged Senator Voorhees to meet him in a series of joint debates and that Voorhees would not respond to the challenge. During Kern’s speech, I think at Crown Point, a man in the audience kept interrupting him with inquiries as to why Senator Voorhees refused to meet Calkins in joint debate. At first no attention was paid to the interruptions, but the man was so persistent that finally Mr. Kern stopped, pointed his finger at the disturber and said, ‘I am surprised than any one in Indiana has the hardihood to ask such a question. Sir, it is evident that you do not know Senator Voorhees and Mr. Calkins. Why, my friend, you could no more drag William H. Calkins into a discussion with Senator Voorhees than you could lasso a wild goose a mile high.’