ny friends, such as Van Brunt, C. Gambrell,
Hazeltine, Bierstadt, Gifford, Church, and Mignot. At this club I
constantly met General Birney, the great Abolitionist, whose famous
charge at Gettysburg did so much to decide the battle. Constant
intercourse with him and with C. A. Dana greatly inspired me in my anti-
slavery views. The manager of _Vanity Fair_ was very much averse to
absolutely committing the journal to Republicanism, and I was determined
on it. I had a delicate and very difficult path to pursue, and I
succeeded, as the publication bears witness. I went several times to Mr.
Dana, and availed myself of his shrewd advice. Browne, too, agreed
pretty fairly with me. I voted for Abraham Lincoln at the first election
in New York. I voted _on principle_, for I confess that every
conceivable thing had been said and done to represent him as an ignorant,
ungainly, silly Western Hoosier, and even the Republican press had little
or nothing to say as to his good qualities. Horace Greeley had "sprung
him" on the Convention at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute as the
only available man, and he had been chosen as our candidate to defeat
Douglas.

Let me here relate two anecdotes. When my brother heard of Lincoln's
"candidacy" he said--

"I don't see why the people shouldn't be allowed to have a President for
once."

A Copperhead friend of mine, who was always aiming at "gentility,"
remarked to me with an air of disgust on the same subject--

"I do _wisht_ we could have a gentleman for President for _oncet_."

The said Copperhead became in due time a Republican office-holder, and is
one yet.

Lincoln was elected. Then came the storm. Our rejoicings were short.
Sumter was fired on. Up to that time everybody, including President
Lincoln, had quite resolved that, if the South was resolved to secede, it
must be allowed to depart in peace. There had been for many years a
conviction that our country was growing to be too large to hold together.
I always despised the contemptible idea. I had been in correspondence
with the Russian Iskander or Alexander Herzen, who was a century in
advance of his time. He was the real abolisher of serfdom in Russia, as
history will yet prove. I once wrote a very long article urging the
Russian Government to throw open the Ural gold mines to foreigners, and
make every effort to annex Chinese territory and open a port on the
Pacific. Herzen translated it into Russian (