[XIV.]
Bradley changes his political views.
The West had always been Republican. Its States had come into the Union as Republican States. It met the solid South with a solid North-west year after year, and it firmly believed that the salvation of the nation's life depended on its fidelity to the war traditions and on the principle of protection to American industries.
Its orators waved the bloody shirt to keep the party together, though each election placed the war and its issues farther into the background of history, and an increasing number of people deprecated the action of fanning smouldering embers into flame again. Iowa and Kansas and Nebraska were Stalwarts of the Stalwart. Kansas was the battle-ground of the old Abolition and Free Soil forces, and their traditions kept alive a love and reverence for the Republican party long after its real leaders had passed away, and long after it had ceased to be the party of the people.
Iowa was hopelessly Republican, also. A strong force in the Rebellion, dominated by New England thought, its industries predominantly agricultural, it held rigidly to its Republicanism, and trained its young men to believe that, while "all Democrats were not thieves, all thieves were Democrats," and, when pressed to the wall, admitted, reluctantly, that there were "some good men among the Democrats."
In the fall of Bradley's last year at Iowa City, another presidential campaign was coming on, but few men considered that there was any change impending. Local fights really supplied the incitement to action among the Republican leaders. There was no statement of a general principle, no discussion of economic issues by their political leaders. They carefully avoided anything like a discussion of the real condition of the people.
Rock County had been the banner Republican county. For years the Democrats of Rock County had met in annual convention to nominate a ticket which they had not the slightest expectation of electing. There was something pathetic in the habit. It was not faith—it was a sort of desperation; and yet the Republicans as regularly had their joke about it, regardless of the pathos presented in the action of a body of men thus fighting a forlorn and hopeless battle. Each year some old-fashioned Democrat dropped away into the grave, and yet the remnant met and nominated a complete ticket, and voted for it solemnly, even religiously.
The young Republicans of the county called this remnant "Free traders" and "Copperheads," exactly as if the terms were synonymous. The Republican boys of the country felt that there was something mysteriously uncanny in the term "Free Trader" (and always associated "Copperhead" with the yellow-backed rattlesnakes that made their dens in the limestone cliffs), and in their snowballing took sides with these mysterious words as shibboleths.
In truth, many of these Democrats were very thoughtful men—old-line Jeffersonians, who held to a principle of liberty. Others had been born Democrats a half-century ago, and had never been able to make any change. They continued the habit of being Democrats, just as they continued the habit of wearing fuzzy old plug hats, of old-fashioned shapes, and long, polished frock coats. Then there were a few of that perpetually cross-grained class who will never agree with anybody else if they can help it. They belonged to the Democracy because the Democrats were in the minority, and considered it wrong to belong to a majority, anyhow. Of this sort were men like Colonel Peavy and old Judd Colwell.