POLITICS I. It is not the design to present here any connected or complete record of the political career of Ingalls. Instances will be adduced showing him in those crises of his course best exhibiting his powers and his eccentricities. Ingalls sought political preferment from his arrival in Kansas. His object at first was nothing more than to provide means for a very modest and economic subsistence. He was engrossing clerk of the Territorial Council in 1859. The same year he was elected a member of the convention which formed the present state constitution. In 1860 he was again clerk of the Council; also in 1861. He was a member and secretary of the Republican convention which met at Lawrence in 1860 to select delegates to the National Republican convention at Chicago. In 1861 he was secretary of the State Senate, and in November of that year was elected from Atchison County to fill a vacancy in that body. September 17, 1862, he was defeated -10 in the Republican convention by Thomas A. Osborn for Lieutenant Governor; and on the 29th, was nominated for that place by the "Union" or bolting faction of the Republican party, combined with Democrats. In the election he was defeated, the vote being 9,023 for Osborn, and 5,685 for Ingalls. He was associated with this faction until the close of the Civil War, being defeated for Lieutenant Governor a second time, in 1864, by James McGrew, of Wyandotte County, the vote being, for McGrew 12,064; for Ingalls 8,493. The "Union" faction charged, perhaps very justly, corruption in the regular Republican organization, and demanded reforms doubtless much needed. The "Unionists" gave full sanction and support to the National Administration in the effort to end the war, charges to the contrary notwithstanding. In 1864 Ingalls was made a member of the staff of Major-General George W. Deitzler, Kansas State Militia, with the rank of Major, and served through the two-weeks campaign to drive General Price out of Missouri and Kansas. He was assigned the duties of Judge Advocate during his brief military service. II. The influence of Mrs. Ingalls on the political fortunes of her husband has been already referred to. In compliance with her wishes and judgment he became a candidate for United States Senator in 1872. The term of Senator Pomeroy was nearing its close, and a successor was to be chosen by the Legislature which assembled in January, 1873. Pomeroy was a candidate to succeed himself, and but for one of those unexpected and entirely unforeseen occurrences incident to corrupt politics would have been re-elected. All through the preliminary period of his campaign Ingalls was of the opinion that Pomeroy could not be defeated. Not so with Mrs. Ingalls. A woman will undertake the most desperate enterprises with sanguine composure and faith in final triumph. The peculiar quality of her mentality called intuition enables her to detect coming events which men declare impossible and the expectation of which preposterous. Mrs. Ingalls was confident of her husband's success, although she was wholly unable to give any satisfactory reason for her faith. Among the supporters of Ingalls there was |