nd most
other organizations followed a massive catafalque and a riderless horse
through streets heavily draped with black. The line of march was long,
arms were reversed, the sorrowing people crowded the way, and solemnity
and grief on every hand told how deeply Lincoln was loved.

I had cast my first presidential vote for him, at Turn Verein Hall, Bush
Street, November 6, 1864. When the news of his re-election by the voters
of every loyal state came to us, we went nearly wild with enthusiasm,
but our heartiest rejoicing came with the fall of Richmond. We had a
great procession, following the usual route--from Washington Square to
Montgomery, to Market, to Third, to South Park, where fair women from
crowded balconies waved handkerchiefs and flags to shouting
marchers--and back to the place of beginning. Processioning was a great
function of those days, observed by the cohorts of St. Patrick and by
all political parties. It was a painful process, for the street pavement
was simply awful.

Sometimes there were trouble and mild assaults. The only recollection I
have of striking a man is connected with a torchlight procession
celebrating some Union victory. When returning from south of Market, a
group of jeering toughs closed in on us and I was lightly hit. I turned
and using my oil-filled lamp at the end of a staff as a weapon, hit out
at my assailant. The only evidence that the blow was an effective one
was the loss of the lamp; borne along by solid ranks of patriots I clung
to an unilluminated stick. Party feeling was strong in the sixties and
bands and bonfires plentiful.

At one election the Democrats organized a corps of rangers, who marched
with brooms, indicative of the impending clean sweep by which they were
to "turn the rascals out." For each presidential election drill crops
were organized, but the Blaine Invincibles didn't exactly prove so.

The Republican party held a long lease of power, however. Governor Low
was a very popular executive, while municipally the People's Party,
formed in 1856 by adherents of the Vigilance Committee, was still in the
saddle, giving good, though not far-sighted and progressive, government.
Only those who experienced the abuses under the old methods of
conducting elections can realize the value of the provision for the
uniform ballot and a quiet ballot box, adopted in 1869. There had been
no secrecy or privacy, and peddlers of rival tickets fought for
patronage to the box's mo