he end there continued in him that
surest positive indication of local fondness, admiration for the women
of what was to him his native land. In beauty, in manner, and in
charm, they surpassed. "Your mother is Northern," he once said to me,
"and very few can approach her; but still, in the general, none
compare for me with the Southern woman." The same causes, early
association, gave him a very pronounced dislike to England; for he
could remember the War of 1812, and had experienced the embittered
feeling which was probably nowhere fiercer than around the shores of
the Chesapeake, the scene of the most wide-spread devastation
inflicted, partly from motives of policy, partly as measures of
retaliation. Spending afterwards three or four years of early manhood
in France, he there imbibed a warm liking for the people, among whom
he contracted several intimacies. He there knew personally Lafayette
and his family; receiving from them the hospitality which the Marquis'
service in the War of Independence, and his then recent ovation during
his tour of the United States in 1825, prompted him to extend to
Americans. This communication with a man who could tell, and did tell
him, intimate stories of intercourse with Washington doubtless
emphasized my father's patriotic prejudices as well as his patriotism.
When he revisited France, in 1856, he found many former friends still
alive, and when I myself went there for the first time, in 1870, he
asked me too to hunt them up; but they had all then disappeared. His
fondness for the French doubtless accentuated his repugnance to the
English, at that time still their traditional enemy. The combination
of Irish and French prepossession could scarcely have resulted
otherwise; and thus was evolved an atmosphere in which I was brought
up, not only passively absorbing, but to a certain degree actively
impressed with love for France and the Southern section of the United
States, while learning to look askance upon England and abolitionists.
The experiences of life, together with subsequent reading and
reflection, modified and in the end entirely overcame these early
prepossessions.

My father was for over forty years professor at West Point, of which
he had been a graduate. In short, the Academy was his life, and he
there earned what I think I am modest in calling a distinguished
reputation. The best proof of this perhaps is that at even so early a
date in our national history as his graduatio