For the officers of the new system were by their whilom predecessors ordered to go "nor stand upon the order of their going," the bullet at times conveying the order. Assassinations, lynchings, and reprisals by both parties to the feud were of daily occurrence. The future for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness in busy city or sylvan grove, was not alluring. My subsequent career makes it necessary for me to arise to explain. Taking at the time a calm survey of the situation, an addition to the column of martyrs seemed to me unnecessary. I believed in the principles of the Republican party and as a private I was willing to vote, work, and be slightly crippled; but had not reached the bleeding and dying point. With such conclusions I resolved to come, and confine myself to the pursuit of my profession and give politics a "terrible letting alone." Oh, if abandoned resolutions were a marketable commodity, what emporium sufficiently capacious and who competent to classify! The organization of the Republican party of Arkansas was on the eve of disruption. Its headquarters were in the building and over the law office of Benjamin & Barnes, with whom I was reading. Violent disputes as to party policy, leadership, and the distribution of the plums of office were of frequent occurrence. I very distinctly remember the day when the climax was reached and "the parting of the ways" determined. The adherents of Senator Clayton and the State administration on the one part, and Joseph Brooks and his followers on the other, coming down the stairs--some with compressed lip and flashing eye, others as petulant as the children who say: "I don't want to play in your yard; I don't like you any more." It was the beginning of the overt act that extinguished Republican rule in Arkansas. The factions led by Powell Clayton and Joseph Brooks, respectively, were known as the "Minstrels" and "Brindle Tails." Incongruity, being the prevailing force, possibly accounted for the contrary character of the names, for there was little euphony in the minstrelsy of the one or a monopoly of brindle appearance in the other, for each faction's contingent, were about equally spotted with the sons of Ham. My friends, Benjamin & Barnes, were prominent as Brindles, and I, being to an extent a novice in the politics of the State, in a position to hear much of the wickedness of the Minstrels and but little of the "piper's lay" in his own behalf, fidelity to my friends, appalled at the alleged infamy of the other fellows, susceptible to encomiums which flattered ambition, I became a Brindle, and an active politician minus a lawyer.