Of course these scandalous matters were soon lost sight of in the excitement of the Civil War.  This thing which changed all our lives the way war does, came upon me like a clap of thunder.  I was living like a hermit, and working like a horse, not trying to make any splurge, as I might 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 you a glimpse into the mind of a conscientious and ignorant voter.  If I had read more, my mind would have been made up beforehand, but by some one else.  I was not a fool; I was just slow and bewildered.  The average voter shoots at the flock and gets it over with.  He has had his mind made up for him by some one—­and maybe it’s just as well:  for when he tries, as I did, to make it up for himself, he is apt to find that he has no basis for judgment.  That is why all governments, free and the other kind, have always been minority governments, and always will be.  And I reckon that’s just as well, too.