JOHN B. HENDERSON
ONE OF THE SEVEN REPUBLICAN SENATORS WHOSE VOTES DEFEATED THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON. HE WAS SUCCEEDED IN THE SENATE BY CARL SCHURZ
I was called upon for a good many speeches in the campaign, and had large and enthusiastic audiences. One of the experiences I had in this campaign I remember with especial pleasure. The movement in favor of paying off national bonds, not in coin, but in depreciated paper money, which found advocacy in the Democratic platform, was in fact not confined to the ranks of the Democratic party. Although the Republican Convention had in its platform sternly declared against any form of repudiation, yet that movement found supporters among the Republicans, too, especially among people of confused moral notions, small politicians eager to win a cheap popularity by catering to questionable impulses, and politicians of higher rank nervously anxious to catch every popular breeze and inclined to bend to it whenever it seemed to blow with some force.
An Appeal to the Plain People
In the early part of the campaign I was asked to make a series of speeches in Indiana, and to begin with an outdoor mass-meeting at a little place—if I remember rightly its name was Corydon—near the Illinois line, at which a large number of farmers were expected. While a great crowd was gathering, I dined at the village hotel with the members of the local committee. They seemed to have something on their minds, which finally came forth, apparently with some hesitation. One of them, after a few minutes of general silence, turned to me with a very serious mien, as if he had to deliver an important message, saying that they thought it their duty to inform me of a peculiar condition of the public mind in that region: that the people around there were all, Republicans as well as Democrats, of the opinion that all the United States bonds should be paid off in greenbacks and that an additional quantity of greenbacks should be issued for that purpose; that there was much feeling on that question, and that they, the committee, would earnestly ask me, if I could not conscientiously advocate the same policy, at least not to mention the subject in my speech.
SENATOR CHARLES D. DRAKE
WHOM CARL SCHURZ MET IN JOINT DEBATE, WHILE RUNNING AGAINST DRAKE'S CANDIDATE FOR THE MISSOURI SENATORSHIP