letter, I presume, was turned over to Mr. Hamer, and, as
there was no other applicant, he cheerfully appointed me. This healed
the breach between the two, never after reopened.

Besides the argument used by my father in favor of my going to West
Point--that "he thought I would go"--there was another very strong
inducement. I had always a great desire to travel. I was already the
best travelled boy in Georgetown, except the sons of one man, John
Walker, who had emigrated to Texas with his family, and immigrated back
as soon as he could get the means to do so. In his short stay in Texas
he acquired a very different opinion of the country from what one would
form going there now.

I had been east to Wheeling, Virginia, and north to the Western Reserve,
in Ohio, west to Louisville, and south to Bourbon County, Kentucky,
besides having driven or ridden pretty much over the whole country
within fifty miles of home. Going to West Point would give me the
opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent,
Philadelphia and New York. This was enough. When these places were
visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or railroad
collision, or any other accident happen, by which I might have received
a temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible, for a time, to
enter the Academy. Nothing of the kind occurred, and I had to face the
music.

Georgetown has a remarkable record for a western village. It is, and
has been from its earliest existence, a democratic town. There was
probably no time during the rebellion when, if the opportunity could
have been afforded, it would not have voted for Jefferson Davis for
President of the United States, over Mr. Lincoln, or any other
representative of his party; unless it was immediately after some of
John Morgan's men, in his celebrated raid through Ohio, spent a few
hours in the village. The rebels helped themselves to whatever they
could find, horses, boots and shoes, especially horses, and many ordered
meals to be prepared for them by the families. This was no doubt a far
pleasanter duty for some families than it would have been to render a
like service for Union soldiers. The line between the Rebel and Union
element in Georgetown was so marked that it led to divisions even in the
churches. There were churches in that part of Ohio where treason was
preached regularly, and where, to secure membership, hostility to the
government, to the war and to th