Lincoln’s first call for volunteers took only a few men out of the county, and none from Vandemark Township, except George Story.  I had not begun to take much interest in the matter; and when in the summer of 1861 there began to be war meetings to spur up young men to enlistment the speakers all shouted to us that the war was not to free the slaves, but to save the Union.  Now this was a new slant on the question, and I had to think over it for a while.

Sitting in the wagon of history with my feet dangling down and facing the rear, as we all ride, I can now see that the thing was as broad as it was long.  The Union could not be preserved without freeing the slaves, for all of what Lincoln said when he stated that he would save the Union by freeing the slaves if he could do that, or by keeping them slaves if he could do that, or by freeing some of them and leaving the rest in servitude if he could do that; but that save the Union he would.  Now in my narrow way, I could see some point in freeing the slaves, but as for the Union, I hardly knew whether it was important or not.  I needed to think it over.  It might be just as well not to fight to preserve the Union; and when I had heard men say, “I enlisted to save the Union, and not to free niggers,” as a lot of them did, I scratched my head and wondered why I could not feel so devoted to the Union as they did.  Looking back from the tail-end of the wagon, I now see what Lincoln meant by the importance of keeping us all under one flag; but I didn’t know then, and I don’t believe one man in a hundred who shouted for the Union knew why the Union was so important.  There never was a better cause than the one we sung for in “The Union, the Union forever!” but thousands and thousands sang and shouted it, and died for it—­how bravely and wonderfully they died for it!—­who knew as little what it meant as I did.  And the rebels—­how gallantly they died for their cause, too.  Not for slavery, as we blindly thought, misjudging them as we must always misjudge our foes (or we should not have the hate in our hearts to fight them); but for the very thing we were fighting for—­liberty, as they believed.

Both sides are always right in war.

I finally began to see light when I thought one night of my old life on the canal, and asked myself how it would affect us in Iowa if York State and the East should secede, as the South was trying to do.  It would put them in shape to starve us of the West by levying duties on our crops when going to market.  But, said I to myself, we could then ship down the Mississippi; but the river was already closed and would always be controlled by the Confederacy.  This was serious; but when I said to myself that the East would never secede, the question, Why not? could not be answered if the principle of secession could once be set up as correct and made good by victory.  Then, it came into my mind after a month or two of thinking, that any state or group of states could secede whenever they liked; that others would go to war with them to keep such unions as were left; and we should never be at peace long:  so after all, the Union was important, and must be preserved.