t have done, even having given up the idea of getting me a team of
horses, which I had been thinking of for a while back with the notion of
maybe getting a buggy and beginning to take Virginia out buggy-riding,
and thus working up in a year or two to popping the question to her. But
now I sulked in my cabin.

3

I guess the war surprised the people who read about it as much as it did
me. I often thought of the poor slaves, and liked Dunlap and Thatcher,
the men I had run into back in Wisconsin on the road in 1855, for going
down into Kansas to fight for Free Soil; but as for fighting in which I
should have any interest; bless you, it never occurred to any of us,
either North or South. The trouble was always going to be off somewhere
else. I guess that's the way with the oncoming of wars. If we knew they
would come to us, we'd be less blood-thirsty.

I heard of the Dred Scott Decision, and thought J.P. Roebuck was talking
foolishness when he came to me one day over in my back field to borrow a
chew of tobacco--he was always doing that--and said that this decision
made slavery a general thing all over the Union. I didn't see any
slavery around Vandemark Township, and no signs of any. I heard of Old
John Brown, and had a hazy idea that he was some kind of traitor who
ought to have been hanged, or the government wouldn't have hanged him.
You see how inconsistent I was. But wars are fought by inconsistent men
who suffer and die for other people's ideas: don't you think so? Abraham
Lincoln was nominated about corn-planting time; but I was not thrilled.
I had never heard of him. The nation was drifting down the rapids to the
falls; and for all the deafening roar that came to our ears, we did not
know or think of the cataract we were to be swept over.

I was a voter now, and so was Magnus; but he was for Lincoln, and I was
not. It seemed to me that the Republican Party was too new. And yet I
was not satisfied with Douglas. Why? It was merely because I had got it
into my mind that he had been beaten in a debate by Lincoln, and it
seemed that this defeat ought to put him out of the running for
president. I sat down a few rods from the polls and thought over the
matter of choosing between Edward Everett and John C. Breckenridge,
pestered by Governor Wade and H.L. Burns and N.V. and the rest, until
finally they left me and when I had made my decision, I found that the
polls had closed. I was a good deal relieved.

I am giving