RUNNING FOR OFFICE.
This is the confession of a political villain; not, however, a perjured
political villain. I never swore to run for office for my country’s
good. I did run once for an office for my own good. I was unsuccessful.
Virtue has its own reward; so has vice. The wicked do not always
flourish like green bay trees. Indeed, judging from a home experience, I
am not prepared to say that they flourish at all. The fall political
campaign of 1866-67 came on while I was carrying my comic lecture about
the camps of Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Mariposa. A thought one day took
possession of me, “Why not run for the Legislature?” I belonged to a
political party. My frozen toes troubled me a good deal and the lecture
did not pay much over expenses. I consulted with one of the pillars of
our party. He belonged in Oak Flat. I took the pillar behind Dan Munn’s
store on Rattlesnake Creek and avowed my intention. The pillar took a
big chew of tobacco, stared, grinned, and said: “Why not?” I consulted
with another pillar behind Bob Love’s store in Montezuma. He was
throwing dirt from a prospect-hole with a long-handled shovel. He leaned
on the shovel, blew his nose _au natural_ without artificial aid,
grinned, and after some deliberation said: “Why not?” I found another
pillar of our party slumming out a reservoir near Jamestown. He was
enveloped in yellow mud to his waist, and smaller bodies of mud
plastered him upward. A short pipe was in his mouth and a slumgullion
shovel in his hand. He said: “Go in for it and win.”
With less assurance and more fear and trembling I consulted with other
and more influential party pillars in Sonora, the county town. Some
hesitated; some were dignified; some cheered me on; some said, “Why
not?” I made the same remark to myself, and replied, “Why not?” The
Assembly was a good gate for entering the political field. My ideas of
its duties were vague. Of my own qualifications for the post I dared not
think. They may have been about equal to those with which I entered the
_Henry’s_ galley as a sea cook. But what matter? Other men no better
qualified than I had gone to Sacramento, received their $10 per diem and
came back alive. I could do that. They seemed to stand as well as ever
in the estimation of their constituents. Then “Why not?” The die was
cast. I announced myself in the county paper as a candidate for the
State Assembly. The County Convention assembled at Sonora. It was a body
distinguished for wisdom and jurisprudence. Judge Ferral of our city was
there. He was then a bright-eyed, active, curly-haired youth, and had
already given much promise of his successful career. Judge Leander Quint
was there. H. P. Barber presided. Tuolumne County had not then been
shorn of its brightest lights by the necessities of the rest of the
State and the world. Somebody nominated me. I arose and paid somebody
else five dollars. This was the first price of ambition. Then I found
myself making my nominating speech. It was a very successful speech. I
left out politics altogether, made no pledges, discussed no principles
and talked no sense. At first the audience stared. Then they laughed
immoderately. So did I. Then they nominated me by acclamation. It was
one of the proudest moments of my life, although I did not know it at
the time. Taken for all in all, it was no wonder they laughed. I was
obliged to laugh myself at the whole affair behind the Court-house when
the Convention adjourned. And “Why not?”
It was the laugh of a fiend! I wanted the position for the per diem. I
was buried in turpitude. My colleagues were all running on principle to
save the country. It is singular that the motive of such a wolf in
sheep’s clothing as I was at that time was not detected. The great and
good men, secure in their own rectitude and purity of purpose, by whom I
was surrounded, never once guessed at the presence of the snake in their
grass. Looking back at this occurrence after the lapse of nearly
twenty-five years, I am more and more astonished that the party should
have risked taking such a load as myself on its shoulders. I had no
position, no standing, next to no reputation, no property, no good
clothes, no whole shoes, no fixed habitation and three sore toes. I had
not nor did not realize the responsibilities of a citizen. I had no
family and could not realize the duties and responsibilities of those
who were rearing young citizens for the great Republic. Should such a
man be sent to the State Legislature? Of course not. Are such men ever
sent? Of course not. I do not think now that at the period spoken of I
was even incorruptible. Should a person who seldom saw over ten dollars
in his possession at any one time be sent where he might be “approached”
by designing men? Of course not. Was such an one ever sent? Never! The
commonwealth of California ran a fearful risk in my nomination.
Few, probably none, suspected the mental misery I endured during this
campaign. Because I knew and felt my turpitude. I knew my unfitness for
the position to which I aspired. I knew where lay the snake in the
grass. Could I meet daily a trusting, credulous constituency, who
believed that my mind was full of projects for the relief of the State
and nation, without remorse? Of course not. I had remorse--bad, but I
dared not back out and off the track. So I kept on, and the vultures
gnawed my vitals. Those who think the wicked have such a good time are
sadly mistaken. Our party was firmly grounded on one grand belief. It
was that nothing the other party could do was right, and nothing that we
did was wrong. This at that time I did not believe. But I pretended to.
Or rather I stifled all thought on the subject. This was the first great
sin. Unlike my colleagues, I was untrue to my own convictions. They----but
how I wished for their faith. It could move mountains of doubt. Mine
couldn’t. How I hated my conscience. It tormented me worse than a
chronic colic. There I was standing shoulder to shoulder with
patriots--battling bravely for a cause, a principle, while I--I cared
for naught save a seat in the Assembly at $10 a day.
It was a stirring campaign, that of 1866, in and about Tuolumne County.
The antagonism was of the bitterest character. Political opponents
reviled each other in print and sometimes peppered each other with
pistols. Bullets flew about night and day. It was dangerous in Sonora to
sleep in a clapboarded house in the average line of aim. The papers left
nothing unsaid which could taunt and irritate. Editors went about the
streets weighed down by masked batteries. It was calculated that 500
pounds of iron were daily packed about the streets in the shape of
derringers, knives, and revolvers. The champions of the opposing parties
never met on the highway but that people peered and squinted from door
and window for the bombardment to commence. Knives were bathed in gore.
Barroom floors showed bloody stains. Men died with their boots on.
Loaded shotguns lay in ambush behind front and back doors. The
atmosphere smelt of blood and possible killing. Saloon plate-glass
mirrors showed the track of pistol bullets. Mass meetings were
assemblages of men from town and country, secretly armed. People spent
most of their time hating each other. Ministers went behind the orthodox
returns and preached sectional and partisan politics. The more vital
tenets of religion were suspended for the time being with the writ of
habeas corpus. I canvassed the county with my comic lecture. It took. It
was popular with both parties. It was a pleasant relief from the heavier
logic and argument used by heavier and more solid speakers. It was like
the farce after the tragedy. It sent assemblies and mass meetings home
in good humor. Nobody asked if such a candidate was fit to make laws.
But there Tuolumne showed wisdom.
They didn’t want any more laws made. Everybody who had been sent to the
Legislature since California was created a State had been busy putting
more laws on the statute books. There was an overplus. People couldn’t
keep count of the laws already made. Tuolumne then showed wisdom in its
endeavor to send one man to the Legislature of 1866-67 who, not being
able to draw up a bill, could not have added a single new law to the
mass already made. I gave my party a great deal of trouble. Once in a
private conversation with one I deemed a friend, although he belonged to
the opposition, I committed myself in favor of greenbacks as a legal
tender. Our party did not approve of greenbacks. Ours was the
old-fashioned hardmoney dollar of our dad’s party. I was hardly aware of
this, through a lamentable ignorance of what we really did advocate. The
County Central Committee, hearing of my treason, sent after me a
messenger with a missive calling on me to explain. I saw then the
horrible blunder I had made, and wished the earth would open and swallow
me. Then I concluded to resign or to run away. But a man bolstered me up
and advised me to deny the report, which I did in an open mass meeting.
The use of paper then would have doubled the amount of money in
circulation, and that seemed to me just what the people needed. Every
mother’s son of them on being questioned said they wanted more money,
and here seemed a means of relieving that want. But the party refused to
put in a plank which might have doubled the dollars in everybody’s
pockets.
Feeling that I had not done justice to the party in making an active
canvass of the county, principally because I had no money to make a
canvass with, by treating long lines of ever-ready patriots at every
bar in Tuolumne, I concluded I would hold a series of private mass
meetings in the day time on horseback. I would do this on election day.
I would gallop from poll to poll and make a speech at each poll. I had a
route laid out embracing half the county. I made the initial equestrian
speech at Jamestown. Thence I galloped to Shaw’s Flat. Shaw’s Flat upset
me. The pillar of our party there, at whose saloon the polls were held,
came to his door while I was speaking, took one look at me and walked
off in disgust. I saw the disgust on his face an inch thick. It smote
me. It threw a wet blanket over all this newly-roused enthusiasm. I
started for Columbia, but all the way that man’s face peered into mine.
It robbed me of all courage and confidence. I had no further heart to
continue the work. It was not at all the regular thing. It was an
innovation on old party usages. The country even then was too old for
such politico-equestrian heroics. I rode back to Jamestown, put the
horse in his stable, and hid myself. The people did not agree to send me
to Sacramento. Perhaps it was fortunate for them they did not. Probably
it was for me. Whatever happens to a man in this life is probably the
best thing for him, inasmuch as nothing else can happen to him. I had
the profit of an experience in making a semi-political debut, and the
people profited by sending another man.
Could the past but be recalled, with all its conditions, contingencies,
and accessories; could I once more renew this episode with the advantage
of years of experience and accumulated wisdom, I might succeed and fill
the post of legislator. But the future is apt to come too late. To be
sure it was for me a period of folly and weakness. My soul even now
squirms with shame to think of it. “And it should,” I hear my
fellow-human judges saying. Of course it should. Man’s first duty to
himself is to hide his follies and bear himself as though he never
committed any. Only I can afford to tell what a wretch I have been. Were
I a candidate for office I could not. Some day, when the world is wiser,
will men cease strutting about in their masks of propriety and wisdom,
and publish their own past errors as freely as now they do those of
their fellows? Is it a good preliminary previous to entrance into that
world where “all things shall be revealed,” where each action lies in
its true nature, and where each one of us must “even to the teeth and
forehead of our faults give in evidence.” “Why not?”