Judge Folger, President Arthur's Secretary of the Treasury, was the Republican candidate against Mr. Cleveland for the Governorship when the latter was elected by such an immense majority. It was a well-known fact that Judge Folger could not have been nominated but for the active and aggressive efforts of the National Administration, and of its agents and representatives. The fight for the Republican nomination for Governor that year was the beginning of the bitter fight between the Blaine and the Arthur forces in the State for the delegation in 1884. In the nomination of Judge Folger the Blaine men were defeated. To neutralize the prestige which the Arthur men had thus secured, thousands of the Blaine men, and some who were not Blaine men, but who were against the National Administration for other reasons, refused to vote for Judge Folger, and thus allowed the State to go Democratic by default. In 1884, when Mr. Blaine was the candidate of the Republicans for the Presidency, a sufficient number of anti-Blaine men in New York,--in a spirit of retaliation, no doubt,--pursued the same course and thus allowed the State again to go Democratic by default. The loss which Mr. Blaine sustained in the latter case, therefore, was much greater than that gained by him in the former. But, let the causes, circumstances, and conditions be what they may, there was not a Democrat in Mississippi in 1884 who did not believe that Mr. Cleveland's election to the Presidency was a foregone conclusion. That he would have the support of the Solid South there was no doubt. Those States, they believed, were as certain to be returned Democratic as the sun would rise on the morning of the day of the election. Although I accepted the nomination for Congress, I as chairman of the Republican State Committee, devoted the greater part of my time to the campaign throughout the State. Mr. Blaine had many warm friends and admirers among the white men and Democrats in the State, some of them being outspoken in their advocacy of his election. In making up the electoral ticket I made every effort possible to get some of those men to consent to the use of their names. One of them, Joseph N. Carpenter, of my own home town, Natchez, gave his consent to the use of his name. He was one of the solid business men of the town. He was not only a large property owner but the principal owner of a local steamboat that was engaged in the trade on the Mississippi River between Natchez and Vicksburg. He was also the principal proprietor of one of the cotton-seed-oil mills of the town. In fact his name was associated with nearly every important enterprise in that community. Socially no family stood higher than his in any part of the South. His accomplished wife was a Miss Mellen, whose brother, William F. Mellen, was one of the most brilliant members of the bar that the State had ever produced. She had another brother who acquired quite a distinction as a minister of the gospel.