Apostle Cowley and I had been boyhood friends. He had been one of the older students at the school that I had attended as a child; and I knew the integrity and directness of his character. He was a stocky, strong man, with a wholesome sort of face, brown with the sunburn of his missionary travels in Canada and in Mexico. (He had been, in fact, solemnizing plural marriages in these polygamous refuges--as we found out later.) As soon as it was clearly understood between us that I represented the Democratic state committee and he represented the Church authorities, I asked for an explanation of Apostle Smoot's candidacy. Cowley began by admitting the candidacy, which President Smith had endorsed (he said) in spite of the opposition of some of the apostles. He argued that Apostle Smoot was only exercising his right of American citizenship in aspiring to the Senatorship; and he explained that the Church authorities did not see why the Church should be drawn into the campaign. But, as I pointed out to him, the Church had already drawn itself in. It had held a solemn conclave of its hierarchy to authorize an apostle's candidacy. The opponents of Church rule would circulate the fact; in any close campaign, the apostle's friends would use the fact upon the faithful; and the Church would be compelled to support its apostle in an assumed necessity of defending itself. Perhaps I was objectionably forceful in my reply to him. With his characteristic gentleness, he rebuked me by recalling that President Woodruff had once taken him into "sacred places," assured him that "Frank Cannon, like David, was a man after God's own heart," and asked him to "labor" for me in politics. If it had been right for the Prophet of God to favor me, why was it not right for the Prophet now to favor some one else? My personal regard for Apostle Cowley kept me from showing the amusement I felt at finding myself in this new scriptural role remembering how President Woodruff had once devoted me to destruction like another Isaac on the altar of Church control. I replied to Cowley, as soberly as I could, that I had never consciously received the aid of any Church influence; that I had always objected to its use, either for or against either party; that I could oppose it now with free hands. He retreated upon the favorite argument of the ecclesiasts: that an apostle did not relinquish his citizenship because of his Church rank; that the very political freedom which we demanded, to be effective, must apply to all men, in or out of the Church. He asked naively: "What did we get statehood for--and amnesty--and our political rights--if we're not to enjoy them?"