mself upon it to watch the debarkation, and when the bill was
presented he refused to pay it because he could see only four barrels,
and demanded the fifth. The clerks got on to the joke, and pretended to
search for the missing barrel until the last whistle blew, when they
suggested to the general that he was occupying the disturbing element.
Whether the contents of the barrel ever caused any other
misunderstandings history fails to record.

As soon as the general was comfortably settled on the blood-bought farm
I dispatched a courier across the country to him, informing him of the
political situation, and imploring him to come out for the regular
Democratic ticket; but he replied in a very diplomatic way that he was
too new a comer to take any active part in the election, and declined.
Tom Cowan, George Magruder and I, a trio which composed the leadership
of the Democracy of the Minnesota valley, decided that the general
should never go to the senate if we could prevent it, and it so happened
that when the first legislature of the state assembled Tom Cowan was in
the senate, but all our efforts to beat him failed, and Henry M. Rice
and the general were elected to the United States Senate. It was hard to
beat a man in those days who was a Democrat, an Irishman and a wounded
soldier.

The only unlucky thing that the general ever encountered was the fact
that he drew the short term when the lots were cast for the positions
the new senators were to assume.

The general served out his term in the senate just about the time the
Civil War broke out, and he tendered his services to the country, and
became a general of volunteers. He was wounded in some battle, and I
remember reading a general order announcing that he had sufficiently
recovered to ride at the head of his brigade in a buggy. I took
advantage of this singular position for a military commander, and
impressed into the service of the state a splendid $2,000 team of
trotters belonging to Harry Lamberton, with his buggy, and himself as
driver, and rode comfortably in it until the end of the Indian war, at
the head of my brigade.

The general was not long in discovering that the political wind had
taken a Republican direction in Minnesota, which boded him no good. So
he pulled up stakes and emigrated to Texas. There he felt the public
pulse, and not finding any immediate indications that he would be chosen
senator, and not having any pressing business in any other