He did not expect that all would agree with him, but he believed
that they would listen to him without prejudice and without anger.
And he so fully believed in the conclusions he had arrived at that
he thought no reasonable man could resist their force or avoid
reaching a like result. His platform, as he called it, when he
came to announce himself as a candidate at the Court House on the
second day of the term of court, in accordance with immemorial
custom in that county, was simply one of plain common-sense. He
was not an office-holder or a politician. He did not come of an
office-holding family, nor did he seek position or emolument. He
offered himself for the suffrages of his fellow-citizens simply
because no other man among them seemed willing to stand forth and
advocate those principles which he believed to be right, expedient,
and patriotic.
He was a white man, he said, and had the prejudices and feelings that
were common to the white people of the South. He had not believed
in the right or the policy of secession, in which he differed from
some of his neighbors; but when it came to the decision of that
question by force of arms he had yielded his conviction and stood
side by side upon the field of battle with the fiercest fire-eaters of
the land. No man could accuse him of being remiss in any duty which
he owed his State or section. But all that he insisted was past.
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