open to doubt, and yet the difficulties in the way of adopting and acting upon them are very great—I mean not only the personal discomfort, but also the impossibility of performing my official duties creditably or satisfactorily so long as matters remain in statu quo. However, I suppose it is my duty to do the best I can and act on emergencies as they arise.
It will afford me great pleasure to receive suggestions from you from time to time as they may occur to you, and I hope you will feel no hesitancy in giving them.
Please accept my thanks for the kindness already done me and believe me
Gratefully and faithfully yours.
TO B. B. CAHOON[1]
I have received your kind note of February 25th and thank you most sincerely for it. Your letter to a member of the Republican committee I have also read in the papers, and I agree with every word you say concerning the condition of the Republican party in Missouri and the process it has to go through in order to save, or rather restore, its vitality. Recent developments, and especially the terrible disclosures in the Belknap case, must have made it painfully apparent to every candid man, who did not know it before, that the same reasoning would apply with equal force to the national organization of the party. We have to face the fact that the machinery of the Government is fairly honeycombed with corruption. The Republic stands before the world in an attitude of unprecedented humiliation and shame. In order to save the honor of the Nation and the confidence of the American people in their Government, no ordinary party claptrap will avail. We must elect a man to the Presi-
- ↑ A lawyer of distinction, living at Fredericktown, Mo.
