when there shall be none to hurt or destroy the peace and welfare of others, the time for the hastening on of which millions of Christian women are working and praying and longing, there will be then no more saloons.

Good and praiseworthy as are the other three varieties of institutes, no good citizen should fail to encourage those that seek to promote in all home life temperance and purity, purity in literature, purity in art, that seek to build up in boys and girls alike true. and equal virtue. One large page of progress in our modern or railroad life, notwithstanding the demoralizing influences supposed to go with the railroad, that great attendant and promoter of civilization, is that on which we read the history of woman's work in the last two decades of the Nineteenth Century.

CHAPTER XI.

POLITICAL HISTORY.

It is not designed in this chapter to give the vote of each county, year by year, according to the division of citizens into political parties, but it is considered sufficient, for the objects of this historic record, to give the political aspects in each county in 1840, 1852, 1856, and 1860, and then the prevailing political sentiment of the counties since the changes brought about by the Civil War and the era of Reconstruction.

As all students of American history know, the year of 1840 was a time of great political excitement over the entire country, and it was the first presidential campaign in which these new counties in NorthWestern Indiana had taken much of any part.

For twenty-four years, from 1801 to 1825, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, had held in succession the office of President, all being what by some were called Democratic-Republicans; then, for four years John Quincy Adams, called a National Republican, was President; and for twelve years more Jackson and Van Buren, called simply Democrats, held that high office; and now many of the people were desirous of a change in the administration of national affairs. William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, was nominated for President and John Tyler, of Virginia, for Vice President by a party or a union of different forces bearing the old historic name of Whig. It was the noted

Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign. In La Porte County the contest was a very exciting one, on the Whig side such men as General Joseph Orr and Hon. John B. Niles, with many other prominent citizens being found; and on the Democratic side such men as Gilbept Hathaway, C. W. Cathcart, and many more whose names will long remain in Northern Indiana history. It was not only an exciting and arduous, but with some even a bitter struggle for success. Wilber F. Storey, afterward connected with the "Chicago Times," was then an editor of the "La Porte Herald," and his utterances in regard to the antislavery men who were beginning to vote with the Whigs, just before the political campaign opened, indicated full well the spirit of the man whose utterances in the "Chicago Times" in the opening years of the Civil War needed to be suppressed by the strong arm of power at Washington. And the publisher, also an editor of that same "Herald," in his issue of July 11, 1840, says the Whigs, whom he styles Federalists, residing in La Porte, "are the most abandoned, reckless, hypocritical, murderous, and lost to every noble, honorable, virtuous feeling, of any other community with which I am acquainted; and within the last few years I have traveled through nine states of the Union," words which General Packard, with good reason, says, "embittered the already aroused feeling of the Whig party"; and words which he who in the heat of his vexation wrote them did not suppose, probably, would live a month. Surely one lesson of history is, that men should not write nor even speak that which they would be ashamed to have go down to posterity.

Two resolutions adopted in this hot campaign will

be quite sufficient to show the spirit of that time in La Porte and also in Porter County. The first is Democratic:

"Resolved, That Federal principles are like Harrison victories, few and far between-and made to suit party customs; and that Harrison's battles, so gloriously won, according to the tactics of the Federal party, are like his principles, wholly unknown and unheard of."

The other is a Whig resolution, adopted by the senatorial convention at Valparaiso, March 28, 1840, "presided over by Solon Robinson," then of Lake County, "with James Blair, of Porter, and Alexander Blackburn, of La Porte, vice presidents, H. S. Orton and Samuel S. Anthony, secretaries."

"Resolved, That we have our political log cabin already raised, that next August we will roof it in, that next November we will chink Locofocos into the cracks, and that next March we will move into it." And in March, 1841, General Harrison did go into the White House at Washington.

Those who, as young men, enter into political life since the great changes produced by the Civil War, may see corruption and hear abuse heaped upon political opponents, but the bitterness manifested by many toward those who were opposed to slavery, while that "irrepressible conflict" was leading on to the great battles and the red fields of blood, they cannot readily realize. That editor of the "La Porte Herald" already named, Wilber F. Storey, who became editorin-chief and proprietor of the "Chicago Times," published in March, 1840, a long article on what he called "Abolitionism." In that article he styled it a "nefarious subject," mentioned contemptuously

some "friends of the poor negro" who held a meeting in the La Porte court house, expressed the hope that the Democratic party would drive the antislavery men out of their party, and called those who spoke against slavery "abolition loafers."

It is evident that even in the campaign of 1840 elements were at work that would be felt more fully in 1860.

La Porte County, Porter County, the State of Indiana and the whole country went that year in favor of the Whig party.

Two brilliant speakers, "captivating" one was called, and the other "a popular speaker of great eloquence," were candidates for Congress, E. A. Hannegan and Henry S. Lane. The latter was elected.

In Lake County the Democrats were quite largely in the majority and gave their vote for E. A. Hannegan. Solon Robinson, however, the first settler at Crown Point, with some other Whigs, had attended that great gathering in May, 1840, at the Tippecanoe battle ground, held in honor of General Harrison, of whom the Whigs of La Porte said: "The battle fields of Tippecanoe, of Fort Meigs, and of the Thames, present to the world imperishable monuments of his fame as a soldier, and upon that evidence he may safely rest."

In 1840 Starke County and Newton had not been organized; and Jasper, with its large territory, having then only twelve hundred and sixty-seven inhabitants, and one hundred and thirty-eight polls, took but little part in political affairs.

Says Judge Thompson, of Rensselaer: "In 1840 the entire taxable valuation of property in what is now Newton, Benton, and Jasper, was $20,340." He