November came, and with it nearly if not quite all our first set of cadets, and others, to the number of about one hundred and thirty.  We divided them into two companies, issued arms and clothing, and began a regular system of drills and instruction, as well as the regular recitations.  I had moved into my new house, but prudently had not sent for my family, nominally on the ground of waiting until the season was further advanced, but really because of the storm that was lowering heavy on the political horizon.  The presidential election was to occur in November, and the nominations had already been made in stormy debates by the usual conventions.  Lincoln and Hamlin (to the South utterly unknown) were the nominees of the Republican party, and for the first time both these candidates were from Northern States.  The Democratic party divided—­one set nominating a ticket at Charleston, and the other at Baltimore.  Breckenridge and Lane were the nominees of the Southern or Democratic party; and Bell and Everett, a kind of compromise, mostly in favor in Louisiana.  Political excitement was at its very height, and it was constantly asserted that Mr. Lincoln’s election would imperil the Union.  I purposely kept aloof from politics, would take no part, and remember that on the day of the election in November I was notified that it would be advisable for me to vote for Bell and Everett, but I openly said I would not, and I did not.  The election of Mr. Lincoln fell upon us all like a clap of thunder.  People saw and felt that the South had threatened so long that, if she quietly submitted, the question of slavery in the Territories was at an end forever.  I mingled freely with the members of the Board of Supervisors, and with the people of Rapides Parish generally, keeping aloof from all cliques and parties, and I certainly hoped that the threatened storm would blow over, as had so often occurred before, after similar threats.  At our seminary the order of exercises went along with the regularity of the seasons.  Once a week, I had the older cadets to practise reading, reciting, and elocution, and noticed that their selections were from Calhoun, Yancey, and other Southern speakers, all treating of the defense of their slaves and their home institutions as the very highest duty of the patriot.  Among boys this was to be expected; and among the members of our board, though most of them declaimed against politicians generally, and especially abolitionists, as pests, yet there was a growing feeling that danger was in the wind.  I recall the visit of a young gentleman who had been sent from Jackson, by the Governor of Mississippi, to confer with Governor Moore, then on his plantation at Bayou Robert, and who had come over to see our college.  He spoke to me openly of secession as a fixed fact, and that its details were only left open for discussion.  I also recall the visit of some man who was said to be a high officer in the order of “Knights of the Golden Circle,”