Epilogue 377 
and shields for his sharpshooters from the mould-boards of old 
ploughs found on the abandoned plantations. All this time 
wherever possible he continued his studies in natural science. 
He made a collection of fossils unearthed in the trenches 
around Vicksburg, land and river shells from the Mississippi 
swamps, and a large collection of mosses while on detached 
duty in Illinois. He also familiarised himself with the geology 
of regions through which the armies passed to which he was 
attached. Time and again he was commended for his services 
and declined promotion to higher rank in other arms of the 
service. “He loved the scarlet facings of the artillery, and 
there was something in the ranking of batteries and the power 
of cannon,” writes Thompson, “that was akin to the workings 
of his own mind. ” 
In 1862 he was married to his cousin. Miss Emma Dean, 
of Detroit, who still lives in Washington with their daughter, 
an only child. Mrs. Powell was often his companion in the 
army and early Western journeys. Upon the return of 
Powell to civil life in 1865 he was tendered a nomination 
to a lucrative political office in Du Page County, Illinois, 
and at the same time he was offered the chair of geology in 
the Wesleyan University, a struggling Methodist College at 
Bloomington, Illinois. There was no hesitation on his part. 
He declined the political honour and its emoluments and ac¬ 
cepted the professorship, which he retained two years. At 
the session of the Illinois Legislature in 1867 a bill was passed, 
largely through his effort, creating a professorship of geology 
and natural history in the State Normal University at Normal, 
Illinois, with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and an appro¬ 
priation of one thousand dollars annually to increase the geo¬ 
logical and zoological collections. He was elected to this chair 
and at about the same time was also chosen curator of the 
Illinois State Natural History Society, whose collections were 
domiciled in the museum of the Normal University. Attracted 
by the Far West as a field for profitable scientific research, the 
summer of 1867 found him using his salary and the other avail¬ 
able funds to defray the expense of an expedition to the then 
Territory of Colorado for the purpose of securing collections. 
