He was a candidate for the United States Senate. Delegates were to be elected to-day to the state convention. Unless he could go with a united front from his home county he was doomed.
His opponent, Alexander Larkin, was the boldest, most unscrupulous, and powerful Carpetbag adventurer who had ever entered the South from the slums of the North.
Larkin had made himself the Chairman of the Republican State Executive Committee, and was running neck and neck with the Judge for the Senate. He had determined to break his opponent's backbone by capturing the whole, or at least a part of the delegates from Butler's home county. The audacity of this movement had fairly taken the Judge's breath. He halted Suggs in his thrilling pursuit of Ku Klux evidence and sent him North on an important mission. He meant to be fully prepared for any trick Larkin might spring. Suggs was bustling about among the delegates conscious that he was the trusted lieutenant of the coming man.
The Carpetbagger had so timed his anonymous letter to John Graham that the shadow of disgrace thus thrown over Butler's name would give him the balance of power. He could not foresee the chain of trivial events which would produce the terrific document John Graham had
