88 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



that when the time for action came almost every person knew 

 his mind. There was hardly a turncoat or a laggard in judg- 

 ment. Moreover, the long study of the problem enabled the 

 people to see how complicated it was, and how great was the 

 room for diversity of opinion. To this was due the manfulness 

 and dignity of the actual war, so far as it was shaped by the 

 commonwealth, and the speedy reconciliation of the divided 

 brethren when it came to an end. 



It was generally accepted, as far back as I remember, that 

 there would be an effort of the North to secede from the 

 Union. As an instance of this, I may note that as a child I 

 heard in the family a good deal of talk concerning Zachary 

 Taylor, who was in some way a kinsman of my mother's peo- 

 ple. This interested me, because he was one of the heroes of 

 the Mexican War, one of the imagined campaigns of my 

 childhood, as was also Jefferson Davis. Among the things 

 told was Taylor's saying, that if the Union ever went to the 

 devil, Davis would be in the lead. Shortly before my mother 

 died in 1891, I asked her about this memory, taking pains 

 not to lead up to the answer. She repeated this remark 

 attributed to Taylor, telling me further that Davis had mar- 

 ried Taylor's daughter without his consent, and that the re- 

 mark was probably due to irritation on that account. I learned 

 also that they were afterwards reconciled. It seems not un- 

 likely that even at that early day Davis may have been among 

 those who believed that the free and the slaveholding states 

 should separate. 



I also recall the fact that in 1857, when my father planted a 

 vineyard on a hill about two miles south of the Ohio River, I 

 urged before the work was begun that the place would from its 

 commanding position be a part of the fortifications for the de- 

 fence of Cincinnati; it turned out to be the case, for the vine- 

 yard was ruined by the great earthworks erected in the centre 

 of it in 1862. This incident was recalled to my memory by my 

 father in about 1880, he attributing to me the remark that "it 



