your organization should adopt the plan adopted at Nashville, of uniting the liberal elements of both parties. It would be a powerful encouragement to those men in the Southern States who are willing to coöperate in the same manner for the purpose of suppressing lawless disturbances and reforming public sentiment. They need sympathy and encouragement, and nothing would give them more of it than the consciousness of not standing alone,—of being a link in a great chain. I consider the movement so happily begun in the South as extremely important. If disturbances are repressed and a healthy influence is exercised upon public opinion there by Southern men themselves, it will not only have a most salutary effect on the spot, but it will relieve us all over the country of some of the greatest difficulties we have to contend with.
I submit this point to you for consideration and would ask you to urge it at your meeting with the liberal Democrats next Thursday. I hope you will be able to organize for united action.
TO WILLIAM FOLLENIUS[1]
In reply to your letter of the 3d instant, I beg to assure you that I should be happy to attend the meeting of the Liberal Republicans of Missouri on the 24th, did not my official duties render it impossible for me to leave Washington at the present time.
You ask me to give you my views on the political situation, and I shall do so with great pleasure. You are certainly right in saying that the same principles which the Liberal Republicans of Missouri inscribed upon their banner in 1870 are now in issue on the larger field of
- ↑ Then a State senator at Jefferson City, Mo.
