The “brass kittle campaign,” however, resulted simply in reducing the normal Republican majority of the district from 10,000 to 3003 votes. But Mr. Donnelly obtained a majority of nearly 500 of the country vote. When Congress met in December, 1879, Mr. Donnelly appeared as a contestant. He claimed that the count had gone against him by reason of illegal ballots, of bribery, and of the colonization of voters. The House committee on elections lingered long in their investigation, partly because it was diversified with an episode which for the time attracted more interest than the contest itself. A letter addressed to the chairman of the committee, Springer of Illinois, made him an offer of $5000 to keep Washburn in his seat. The authorship was later fixed by a special committee of investigation on one Finley, a friend of Donnelly. They did not find that Mr. Donnelly had inspired the letter or had known that it was to be written and sent. The alleged object, of course, was to so incense Springer against Mr. Washburn that he would immediately swing his committee for the innocent contestant.
Still it was a Democratic House, willing, according to abundant precedent, to seat its partisan contestant if any plausible explanation could be invented. On the last day of the session two reports came in from the committee on elections, each signed by five members. The committee had arrived at no conclusion. The House ordered the reports printed and recommitted, and that was the last ever heard of the contest. Mr. Washburn served out the term with great satisfaction to his constituents, and was accorded two reëlections by majorities which nobody had occasion to question.
Ignatius Donnelly thus closed his career in national politics. He appeared later in two or more state legislatures, and was editor of several short-lived weekly newspapers. In early life he had published a small volume of poems and some prose essays in which he gave assurance of literary ability. His occupation as statesman gone, he now turned to authorship. In the winter of 1880-81 he composed a geographical romance, entitled “Atlantis, the Lost Continent.” He dressed the ancient classical legend in such attractive garb as to interest a great body of readers, serious and other. Many editions have been published. This work was followed by another, similar in character, under the title of “Ragnarök.” The author elaborated the ingenious theory that the mantle of drift covering large portions of the northern hemisphere had been landed where it lies, when the earth at some time crossed the orbit of some great meteor. This fascinating book was also widely read. Mr. Donnelly next took up the study of a question which had already been among his recreations, that of the authorship of the plays and poems of Shakespeare. His “Great Cryptogram” of a thousand octavo pages contains the results of “an incalculable labor, reaching through many weary years.” In the first part of King Henry the Fourth, Mr. Donnelly professed to have discovered the key to an involved cipher showing that Francis Bacon, Nicholas Bacon’s son, had a mysterious connection with that work, although making no clear and direct claim to its authorship. There was a bewildering array of “root numbers” and “modifying numbers,” beyond the understanding of the wayfaring man. No hidden secrets were revealed by the ingenious and complicated computations, and no additions to historical knowledge were obtained. But Mr. Donnelly only claimed to have made a small beginning of a great work left to future investigators. The book, however, excited great interest among people concerned with the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, and formed a notable addition to that literature. In 1889 the indefatigable author brought out a novel under the title “Cæsar’s Column,” being a graphic and horrible picture of the fancied results of the sway of an unbridled plutocracy in America. Published at a happy moment, the book was sold by hundreds of thousands of copies, not only in America but in translated versions in Europe. The first edition appeared under the name of Edmund Boisgilbert, and the author had no little difficulty in finding a publisher. In another novel, “Dr. Huguet,” the author appealed for a humaner treatment of people of color, but the public did not respond by buying largely. Later ephemeral volumes and pamphlets added nothing to the repute of a Minnesota author known wherever the English tongue was spoken.