The fall elections of this year were complicated by the hostile influence of the Executive, but the popular current was strongly on the side of Congress. A few prominent Republican members followed the President, but the great body of them stood firm. In my own Congressional district my majority was over 6,200, notwithstanding the formidable conservative opposition in my own party, and its extraordinary efforts to divide the Republicans through the patronage of the Administration. Nearly all of my old opponents in the district and State were now Johnsonized, except Gov. Morton, whose temporary desertion the year before was atoned for by a prudent and timely repentance. He was not, however, thoroughly reconstructed; for in the Philadelphia Loyal Convention which met in September of this year to consider the critical state of the country, he used his influence with the delegates from the South to prevent their espousal of Negro Suffrage, and begged Theodore Tilton to prevail on Frederick Douglass to take the first train of cars for home, in order to save the Republican party from detriment. He was still under the shadow of his early Democratic training; and he and his satellites, vividly remembering my campaign for Negro Suffrage the year before, and finding me thoroughly intrenched in my Congressional district, hit upon a new project for my political discomfiture. This was the re-districting of the State at the ensuing session of the Indiana Legislature, which they succeeded in accomplishing by disguising their real purpose. There was neither reason nor excuse for such a scheme at this time, apart from my political fortunes; and by the most shameless Gerrymandering three counties of my district, which gave me a majority of 5,000, were taken from me, and four others added in which I was personally but little acquainted, and which gave an aggregate Democratic majority of about 1,500. This was preliminary to the next Congressional race, and the success of the enterprise remained to be tested; but it furnished a curious illustration of the state of Indiana Republicanism at that time.