largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had become staid and orderly.
CHAPTER XVI.
RESIGNATION--PRIVATE LIFE--LIFE AT GALENA--THE COMING CRISIS.
My family, all this while, was at the East. It consisted now of a wife and two children. I saw no chance of supporting them on the Pacific coast out of my pay as an army officer. I concluded, therefore, to resign, and in March applied for a leave of absence until the end of the July following, tendering my resignation to take effect at the end of
that time. I left the Pacific coast very much attached to it, and with
the full expectation of making it my future home. That expectation and that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy
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bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4. The passage of that bill, and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the further West.
In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son
whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama. I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our
support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis, to which we went, but I had no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. I worked very
hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the object in a moderate way. If nothing else could be done I would load a cord of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale. I managed to keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague. I had suffered very severely and for a long time from this disease,
while a boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not
keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I was able to perform. In the fall of 1858 I sold out my stock, crops and farming utensils at auction, and gave up farming.
In the winter I established a partnership with Harry Boggs, a cousin of
Mrs. Grant, in the real estate agency business. I spent that winter at
St. Louis myself, but did not take my family into town until the spring.
Our business might have become prosperous if I had been able to wait for it to grow. As it was, there was no more than one person could attend
to, and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St.
Louis and engaged in the real estate agency business, I was a candidate
for the office of county engineer, an office of respectability and
emolument which would have been very acceptable to me at that time. The
incumbent was appointed by the county court, which consisted of five
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members. My opponent had the advantage of birth over me (he was a citizen by adoption) and carried off the prize. I now withdrew from the co-partnership with Boggs, and, in May, 1860, removed to Galena, Illinois, and took a clerkship in my father's store.
While a citizen of Missouri, my first opportunity for casting a vote at a Presidential election occurred. I had been in the army from before attaining my majority and had thought but little about politics,
although I was a Whig by education and a great admirer of Mr. Clay. But the Whig party had ceased to exist before I had an opportunity of exercising the privilege of casting a ballot; the Know-Nothing party had taken its place, but was on the wane; and the Republican party was in a chaotic state and had not yet received a name. It had no existence in
the Slave States except at points on the borders next to Free States.
In St. Louis City and County, what afterwards became the Republican party was known as the Free-Soil Democracy, led by the Honorable Frank P. Blair. Most of my neighbors had known me as an officer of the army with Whig proclivities. They had been on the same side, and, on the
death of their party, many had become Know-Nothings, or members of the American party. There was a lodge near my new home, and I was invited to join it. I accepted the invitation; was initiated; attended a meeting
just one week later, and never went to another afterwards.
I have no apologies to make for having been one week a member of the
American party; for I still think native-born citizens of the United States should have as much protection, as many privileges in their native country, as those who voluntarily select it for a home. But all secret, oath-bound political parties are dangerous to any nation, no
matter how pure or how patriotic the motives and principles which first
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bring them together. No political party can or ought to exist when one of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought and to the
right to worship God "according to the dictate of one's own conscience," or according to the creed of any religious denomination whatever. Nevertheless, if a sect sets up its laws as binding above the State
laws, wherever the two come in conflict this claim must be resisted and
suppressed at whatever cost.
Up to the Mexican war there were a few out and out abolitionists, men who carried their hostility to slavery into all elections, from those
for a justice of the peace up to the Presidency of the United States. They were noisy but not numerous. But the great majority of people at the North, where slavery did not exist, were opposed to the institution, and looked upon its existence in any part of the country as unfortunate. They did not hold the States where slavery existed responsible for it;
and believed that protection should be given to the right of property in slaves until some satisfactory way could be reached to be rid of the institution. Opposition to slavery was not a creed of either political party. In some sections more anti-slavery men belonged to the Democratic party, and in others to the Whigs. But with the inauguration of the Mexican war, in fact with the annexation of Texas, "the
inevitable conflict" commenced.
As the time for the Presidential election of 1856--the first at which I had the opportunity of voting--approached, party feeling began to run high. The Republican party was regarded in the South and the border States not only as opposed to the extension of slavery, but as favoring the compulsory abolition of the institution without compensation to the owners. The most horrible visions seemed to present themselves to the
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minds of people who, one would suppose, ought to have known better. Many educated and, otherwise, sensible persons appeared to believe that emancipation meant social equality. Treason to the Government was openly advocated and was not rebuked. It was evident to my mind that the election of a Republican President in 1856 meant the secession of
all the Slave States, and rebellion. Under these circumstances I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country
