There was nothing for me, and the Confederates who were with me, but the ancient label of a Democracy worn by a riffraff of opportunists, Jeffersonian principles having quite gone to seed.

But I proposed to lead and reform it, not to follow and fall in behind the selfish and short-sighted time servers who thought the people had learned nothing and forgot nothing; and instant upon finding myself in the saddle I sought to ride down the mass of ignorance which was at least for the time being mainly what I had to look to for a constituency.
Mr.Prentice, who knew the lay of the ground better than I did, advised against it.

The personal risk counted for something.

Very early in the action I made a direct fighting issue, which--the combat interdicted--gave me the opportunity to declare--with something of the bully in the tone--that I might not be able to hit a barn door at ten paces, but could shoot with any man in Kentucky across a pocket handkerchief, holding myself at all times answerable and accessible.
I had a fairly good fighting record in the army and it was not doubted that I meant what I said.
But it proved a bitter, hard, uphill struggle, for a long while against odds, before negro testimony was carried.

A generation of politicians were sent to the rear.