When the Legislature convened they accordingly placed in nomination as their candidate for United States Senator, Alanson J. Streeter, a farmer by occupation, whose large wealth had enabled him to take up politics as a diversion, and whose views had been of a sufficiently variegated character, to enable him to claim political kinship with any of the existing partisan organizations. General Palmer was already in the field as the Democratic candidate for Senator, and the Republicans named ex-Governor Richard J. Oglesby as their nominee. Balloting began on the 20th day of January and continued from day to day—when the Legislature was in session—until the 11th of March, when the contest ended as already stated. The attitude of the Farmers’ Alliance members, from start to finish, toward the Republican minority, was in effect, that they presented to them the alternative of electing the Alliance nominee with Republican votes, or of allowing the Democratic nominee to be elected by Alliance votes. The proposition was one as humiliating to the great political organization to which it was made, as it was inconsistent in those who made it. Nevertheless, it was adhered to and all counter-propositions were rejected. Republican diplomacy was tried without result, the Alliance members refusing to vote for a leading representative of their own interests when he was put forward as the Republican nominee. As the contest was prolonged, the feeling between Republicans and Democrats became more intensely antagonistic, and a point was finally reached where some of the Republican leaders apparently determined to defeat General Palmer at any cost. To do this they determined to throw the support of the entire Republican membership of the Legislature to Streeter, thereby securing his election by a majority of two votes. Principles were for the time being lost sight of by those who favored this movement. Political trusts were relegated to the region of barren idealities, and rank heresies were to be swallowed without a grimace for the sole purpose of compassing the defeat of an old time political adversary. That the dominant party of the third State in the Union was not in a sense, committed to the vagaries of a nondescript political organization, and made directly responsible for the acts of one of its most erratic representatives, was due to the sound judgment and positive convictions of a very small number of Republican Legislators, of whom Hon. Henry H. Evans, representing the Fourteenth Senatorial District, was the acknowledged leader.