The first national republican convention met at Philadelphia in the fall of 1856 and nominated General John C. Fremont as its candidate for President. I took an active part in the campaign in Iowa that ensued. At the request of the central committee of the state I spent several weeks in canvassing Davis county. Many of the settlers in the southern tier of townships, both in Van Buren and Davis counties, instead of finding themselves in a slave state, in the state of Missouri, were really citizens of the free state of Iowa. It was much easier to ascertain the true southern boundary of our state than it was to remove the prejudices of the benighted citizens who had by mistake settled in Iowa, so when I went into Davis county in 1856 to make republican speeches opposed to the existence and extension of slavery in our free territory, I met with small encouragement. We were courteously called "black republicans," and frequently designated as "damn black republicans." At one point where I had an appointment to make a political speech I found an audience assembled that had armed themselves with rotten eggs, with the intention of driving me out of their locality. It so happened that the year before most of these men had been indicted for libel in accusing their school-master of burning down a school house in the township, notifying him publicly to leave the county or suffer mob violence. A civil suit was also instituted against them for damages. I had been employed by them and succeeded in getting them off with the reasonable sum of eight hundred dollars, for which they were truly grateful, and when they found that I was to be the "black republican" orator advertised for the occasion, they generously assured me that if it had been anybody else they would not have permitted him to speak, but as I had stood by them in their trouble I might go on and say just what I pleased. They were a warm-hearted, hot-headed, impulsive set of men. Just how many converts I made during the two weeks that I was engaged in speaking in Davis county I cannot say. We had no republican organization in the county, and the leading men who took any active part in politics in opposition to the democratic party were running Bell and Everett as their candidates. Davis county, at the ensuing election, gave Fremont electors only two hundred and fifty votes, and the vote in the state of Iowa stood as follows: Fremont, 43,954; Buchanan, 36,170; Fillmore, 9,180. CHAPTER III REMOVED TO DES MOINES The practice of law in Van Buren county did not prove very remunerative. The district court met only twice a year. The business of the term sometimes occupied only two or three days, seldom beyond one week, and never beyond two weeks.