that time to the present I have voted Democratic at every election, occasionally scratching an unworthy man on the ticket. One every occasion when there was any contest as to liquor I have voted against whisky, and never signed a saloon license petition in my life, and have always signed the remonstrance against them. and the only time I ever contributed to an election and was to carry local option; I felt that was done in self-defense, as we had a decided majority, and the whisky element was buying the election against us. Although not a total abstrainer, I have always been a temperance man, as have been my brothers and father and grandfather before me neither have we been members of temperance or other benevolent organizations or societies, ever holding to the belief that all the good accomplished by them can be far better and more successfully done through the church and religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. I take the ground that were I to join such societies, it would be a virtual admission that my religious convictions and vows were not sufficient to accomplish the desired end. A position that I could not for a moment entertain. My opposition to intoxicating drinks went so far as to cause me to refuse to sell my corn to be made into whisky, or barley for beer, and I gave up raising barley, though a very profitable crop, because there was no other market for it.

As to my religious belief, I am a Baptist, from principle and conviction. Before I became a Baptist, all my surroundings, associations and teachings, and thereby my partialities and sympathies, were for the Episcopalians and Methodists; and when I became of an age that I felt like I ought to unite with some church, I tired to become a Methodist, but could not reconcile it with my duty and conscience. I was taught from my infancy to shun vice and immorality. I never used tabacco in any form; I never swore an oath or told a falsehood but once, that I have any recollections of, and that was the last year of m school life. The boys had an unwritten law that in all cases we should stand by each other, under penalty of everlasting disgrace; and in a play that we were engaged in, I received an accidental wound from a fellow student, in the face, that should the teacher know the truth of, would subject the other boy to a severe punishment, and in the council of war held by the students, it was decided that I should not tell the truth about it, and I yielded to that decision.

[Continued on page 435]

Thanks to Candy Hearn for transcribing this page.