People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1894 — OPENS HIS CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE]

OPENS HIS CAMPAIGN.

Cel. Breckinridge Asks for Reelectlou to Congress. Lexington, Ky., May B.—CoL Breckinridge made his first speech in his campaign for reelection to congress to an enormous crowd in this city. After referring to his past career and services, and stating his position on the tariff, he spoke at considerable length on his recent trial at Washington. He acknowledged his guilt, and said he had fallen in a moment of weakness and passion, but had done all within his power to prevent a public scandal except the one thing, marriage, which at no moment had he considered. Did be think for a moment, as claimed by his enemies, that his sin had made him unfit to represent his hearers in congress; that a reelection would be looked upon by the world as a vindication: that a vote for him was either a vote of approval or of condonation of his misdeeds,' he would not ask for a reelection, nor accept the votes of his hearers, nor live in their midst. But of what he had been guilty he had made public acknowledgment, and his reelection could neither take from nor add to the punishment he had suffered. He was glad exposure had come. He eared not now for the closet door to be opened, for there was no skeleton there. He could now look up through the blue Bkies of the upper world, and feel that there was no cloud there. He would wear with him the scars of the past, but would no longer carry the dread of exposure. lie would come out of the storm, in some respects, conqueror. Col. Breckinridge said that the extent of his guilt was truthfully confessed by him without justification or palliation, and he asked no condonation. In conclusion he said: “It some one in your midst can better do the work you want done as your representative, choose him; I shall submit; some one whose life has been stainless; whose morals .young men can imltato with protit; whose days have been pure and whose nights have been sinless; whoso ability is ample, whose ex perience is wide. Fot 100 years thiß district has been represented by men. They have not always been sinless men, and whether you reelect or reject me, hereafter whon some ode comes to write Its history, whatever blame may attach to mo, ho will writo of me that, even with that blame, ho loved the poor he toiled for hia fellow men, he labored for good causes; and as this hlstorlun turns over the pages of the record in which my utterances are contained ho will rise from them with the belief that I was loyal to my principles, faithful to truth, devoted to you."