Wichita Eagle

The Dog Fennel Ticket.
Everybody wants to know what Col. Ingersoll meant at Chicago last week by calling Cleveland and Thurman the "dog fennel" candidates. It has been supposed by some that he really said "dog kennel" candidates, meaning really an expression of contempt; but The Press is happy to state that Col. Ingersoll did not say this or mean this, and that he had no intention of setting a bad example by slinging campaign mud. The expression "dog fennel" has a historic meaning in this connection, and its historic sense is the sense in which Col. Ingersoll used it. During the war of the rebellion the Knights of the Golden Circle, a copperhead organization that extended over several states in the Mississippi valley, used to drill in back lots, where the ugly weed known as "dog fennel" grew, because they were ashamed to drill in the public streets or conspicuous parts of town. James K. Magie, then editor of The Canton (Ills.) Register, denounced a local company of the Golden Circle Knights by the epithet of "Dog Fennel Rangers," which some village genius had applied to them by a happy inspiration. The nickname took from the start. It became the synonym for copperheads in all that region, and Col. Ingersoll, then a resident of the neighboring county of Peoria, heard it and salted it down in his vocabulary of gems of eloquence. What was more natural than that he should apply it to the ticket composed of Cleveland, who stayed at home during the war, and Thurman, whose copperhead sympathies were notorious? No, the name "Dog Fennel Ticket" is not mud. It is war, and it will stick.—New York Press.