eceived a package of letters, the contents of
which were disclosed to me, one hundred dollars in gold, and a small
revolver loaded.* I took with me a young man named Augustus Bixby,
who then lived in Groton, but who had seen something of the world,
and was not daunted by the uncertainties of life. He was afterwards
a cavalry officer. During the war I one day read in the papers that
Bixby had been promoted for gallantry in an affair in the Shenandoah
Valley. Within a few days after I met him in Washington on a crutch,
or walking with the help of a cane. He had been wounded in the
contest. I said:

"Bixby, what did you do?" He replied:

"I don't know, except I sailed in."

At New York I telegraphed Vice-President Hamlin, then in Maine, that
he should come as far South as New York, that he might be in a
situation to act in case of the death or capture of Mr. Lincoln, of
whom we then knew nothing. At New York, April 24, I telegraphed
Governor Andrew:

"General Wool and Vice-President Hamlin are in favor of your taking the
responsibility of sending two regiments to take charge of the forts,
and to furnish and arm three vessels for the protection of the coast.
You can exercise the power, under the circumstance, better than anybody
else." The same day I sent this dispatch: "Send without delay a
steamer with provisions for General Butler's command at Annapolis."

At Perryville, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, I sent Bixby with the
despatches by the first boat to Annapolis, with instructions to make
his way to Washington at the earliest moment. I followed in the next
boat. Upon my arrival at General Butler's headquarters, I learned that
Bixby had left on foot. As the troops were at work in re-laying the
track, there was no danger. Indeed, the small squads of men who had
burned bridges and torn up tracks disappeared with the arrival of
troops. At nine o'clock in the evening, a train, the first train,
carrying the New York Sixty-ninth Regiment, left for Annapolis
Junction, at which place we arrived at one o'clock in the morning.
The only light upon the train was the headlight, and we moved only
the length of the train at each inspection of the road. I made a
pillow of my small valise, and a bed of my blanket, and camped on the
floor of one of the small houses at Annapolis Junction. In the morning
I found Colonel Butterfield of the New York Twelfth and Colonel Scott,
a nephew of General Scott, who assumed th