There came an affirmative roar.
"Well," I continued, "I am not, and if you send me to the National Convention I will not vote for his nomination, if his be the only name presented, because I firmly believe that his nomination will mean the marching through a slaughter-house to an open grave, and I refuse to be party to such a folly."
The answer of the convention was my appointment by acclamation, but it was many a day before I heard the last of my unlucky figure of speech.
Notwithstanding this splendid indorsement, I went to the National Convention feeling very like the traditional "poor boy at a frolic." All seemed to me lost save honor and conviction. I had become the embodiment of my own epigram, "a tariff for revenue only." Mr. Cleveland, in the beginning very much taken by it, had grown first lukewarm and then frightened. His "Free Trade" message of 1887 had been regarded by the party as an answering voice. But I knew better.
In the national platform, over the protest of Whitney, his organizer, and Vilas, his spokesman, I had forced him to stand on that gospel. He flew into a rage and threatened to modify, if not to repudiate, the plank in his letter of acceptance. We were still on friendly terms and, upon reaching home, I wrote him the following letter. It reads like ancient history, but, as the quarrel which followed cut a certain figure in the political chronicle of the time, the correspondence may not be historically out of date, or biographically uninteresting:
II
MR. WATTERSON TO MR. CLEVELAND
Courier-Journal Office, Louisville, July 9, 1892.--My Dear Mr. President: I inclose you two editorial articles from the Courier-Journal, and, that their spirit and purpose may not be misunderstood by you, I wish to add a word or two of a kind directly and entirely personal.
To a man of your robust understanding and strong will, opposition and criticism are apt to be taken as more or less unfriendly; and, as you are at present advised, I can hardly expect that any words of mine will be received by you with sentiments either of confidence or favor.
I was admonished by a certain distrust, if not disdain, visited upon the honest challenge I ventured to offer your Civil Service policy, when you were actually in office, that you did not differ from some other great men I have known in an unwillingness, or at least an inability, to accept, without resentment, the question of your infallibility. Nevertheless, I was then, as I am now, your friend, and not your enemy, animated by the single purpose to serve the country, through you, as, wanting your great opportunities, I could not serve it through myself.