kind imperilled the union of
the States, and that the union of the States was the sole salvation
of the perpetuity of the republic and its liberties. I went to
Yale saturated with these ideas. Yale was a favorite college
for Southern people. There was a large element from the
slaveholding States among the students. It was so considerable
that these Southerners withdrew from the great debating societies
of the college and formed a society of their own, which they
called the Calliopean. Outside of these Southerners there were
very few Democrats among the students, and I came very near being
drawn into the Calliopean, but happily escaped.

The slavery question in all its phases of fugitive slave law and
its enforcement, the extension of slavery into the new territories,
or its prohibition, and of the abolition of the institution by
purchase or confiscation were subjects of discussion on the campus,
in the literary societies, and in frequent lectures in the halls in
New Haven by the most prominent and gifted speakers and advocates.

That was a period when even in the most liberal churches the pulpit
was not permitted to preach politics, and slavery was pre-eminently
politics. But according to an old New England custom, the pastor
was given a free hand on Thanksgiving Day to unburden his mind
of everything which had been bubbling and seething there for
a year. One of the most eminent and eloquent of New England
preachers was the Reverend Doctor Bacon, of Center Church,
New Haven. His Thanksgiving sermon was an event eagerly anticipated
by the whole college community. He was violently anti-slavery.
His sermons were not only intently listened to but widely read,
and their effect in promoting anti-slavery sentiment was very great.

The result of several years of these associations and discussions
converted me, and I became a Republican on the principles
enunciated in the first platform of the party in 1856. When I came
home from Yale the situation in the family became very painful,
because my father was an intense partisan. He had for his party
both faith and love, and was shocked and grieved at his son's
change of principles. He could not avoid constantly discussing
the question, and was equally hurt either by opposition or silence.

II. IN PUBLIC LIFE

The campaign of 1856 created an excitement in our village which
had never been known since the Revolutionary War. The old
families who had been settled