"Senator Cullom.
"Dear Sir:
"I did not think the blow would be a cyclone when I saw you just before the election. I knew that a storm was coming, but did not dream that its severity would be so dreadful.
"The thing to do this Winter is to repeal the McKinley bill, and strengthen the reciprocity scheme by giving Blaine the sugar duties to work on—freeing no sugar before reciprocal equivalents are secured from respective cane-sugar tropical countries; or (2) fail to pass the chief appropriation bills, so that an extra session of the Dem. Congress would be called, and that party must deal with the tariff and be responsible for their action or failure to act; or (3) pass the apn. bills; adjourn; next year, have the Senate defeat the Dem. tariff bill, or the President veto it, and go before the people in 1892 on the issue of standing by the McKinley bill till overwhelmed and wiped out in Nov. of that year, as the Whigs were in '52 when standing by the Forsythe-Stone Law of Fillmore and Clay.
"The last course I presume is the one that will be pursued. When men who are statesmen of the Quay-Reid-McKinley calibre start in wrong their pride keeps them in the same downward path till they tumble the whole outfit into the bottomless pit.
"I do not consider a Presidential nomination for any man worth a nickel on the issue of standing by the McKinley bill. The fate of Gen. Scott in '52 surely awaits him.
"Either of the other mentioned courses might give our party a fighting chance. But it won't get it, if the perverse members who have landed us in the ditch have their way.
"Read the suggestions from the article in The N. Y. Times for
Republicans.
"Yours truly,
"(Signed) J. Medill."
I was elected to the Senate, the fourth time, in January, 1901. This time I had a very serious contest. More opposition had developed, and there were more strong men against me, than at any previous election. This was largely the outgrowth of the opposition of the late Governor Tanner, who had just completed his term as Governor of Illinois, and who had announced he would not be a candidate for renomination, but would be a candidate to succeed me. I believe it was mainly through the efforts of Governor Tanner and his friends that the Hon. Robert R. Hitt, the Hon. Joseph G. Cannon, and the Hon. George W. Prince were induced to become candidates, in the hope of weakening me in their respective districts. I do not believe that either Mr. Hitt or Mr. Cannon was a party to any particular scheme to defeat me. They were candidates in good faith, and aspired to the office of United States Senator, but neither of them had any desire to defeat me unless he could get the office himself.