Once we saw real service.  When the news of the assassination of Lincoln reached San Francisco the excitement was intense.  Newspapers that had slandered him or been lukewarm in his support suffered.  The militia was called out in fear of a riot and passed a night in the basement of Platt’s Hall.  But preparedness was all that was needed.  A few days later we took part in a most imposing procession.  All the military and most other organizations followed a massive catafalque and a riderless horse through streets heavily draped with black.  The line of march was long, arms were reversed, the sorrowing people crowded the way, and solemnity and grief on every hand told how deeply Lincoln was loved.

I had cast my first presidential vote for him, at Turn Verein Hall, Bush Street, November 6, 1864.  When the news of his re-election by the voters of every loyal state came to us, we went nearly wild with enthusiasm, but our heartiest rejoicing came with the fall of Richmond.  We had a great procession, following the usual route—­from Washington Square to Montgomery, to Market, to Third, to South Park, where fair women from crowded balconies waved handkerchiefs and flags to shouting marchers—­and back to the place of beginning.  Processioning was a great function of those days, observed by the cohorts of St. Patrick and by all political parties.  It was a painful process, for the street pavement was simply awful.

Sometimes there were trouble and mild assaults.  The only recollection I have of striking a man is connected with a torchlight procession celebrating some Union victory.  When returning from south of Market, a group of jeering toughs closed in on us and I was lightly hit.  I turned and using my oil-filled lamp at the end of a staff as a weapon, hit out at my assailant.  The only evidence that the blow was an effective one was the loss of the lamp; borne along by solid ranks of patriots I clung to an unilluminated stick.  Party feeling was strong in the sixties and bands and bonfires plentiful.

At one election the Democrats organized a corps of rangers, who marched with brooms, indicative of the impending clean sweep by which they were to “turn the rascals out.”  For each presidential election drill crops were organized, but the Blaine Invincibles didn’t exactly prove so.

The Republican party held a long lease of power, however.  Governor Low was a very popular executive, while municipally the People’s Party, formed in 1856 by adherents of the Vigilance Committee, was still in the saddle, giving good, though not far-sighted and progressive, government.  Only those who experienced the abuses under the old methods of conducting elections can realize the value of the provision for the uniform ballot and a quiet ballot box, adopted in 1869.  There had been no secrecy or privacy, and peddlers of rival tickets fought for patronage to the box’s mouth.  One served as an election officer at the risk of sanity if not of life.  In the “fighting Seventh” ward I once counted ballots for thirty-six consecutive hours, and as I remember conditions I was the only officer who finished sober.