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I guess the war surprised the people who read about it as much as it did me. I often thought of the poor slaves, and liked Dunlap and Thatcher, the men I had run into back in Wisconsin on the road in 1855, for going down into Kansas to fight for Free Soil; but as for fighting in which I should have any interest; bless you, it never occurred to any of us, either North or South. The trouble was always going to be off somewhere else. I guess that's the way with the oncoming of wars. If we knew they would come to us, we'd be less blood-thirsty.
I heard of the Dred Scott Decision, and thought J.P. Roebuck was talking foolishness when he came to me one day over in my back field to borrow a chew of tobacco--he was always doing that--and said that this decision made slavery a general thing all over the Union. I didn't see any slavery around Vandemark Township, and no signs of any. I heard of Old John Brown, and had a hazy idea that he was some kind of traitor who ought to have been hanged, or the government wouldn't have hanged him. You see how inconsistent I was. But wars are fought by inconsistent men who suffer and die for other people's ideas: don't you think so? Abraham Lincoln was nominated about corn-planting time; but I was not thrilled. I had never heard of him. The nation was drifting down the rapids to the falls; and for all the deafening roar that came to our ears, we did not know or think of the cataract we were to be swept over.
I was a voter now, and so was Magnus; but he was for Lincoln, and I was not. It seemed to me that the Republican Party was too new. And yet I was not satisfied with Douglas. Why? It was merely because I had got it into my mind that he had been beaten in a debate by Lincoln, and it seemed that this defeat ought to put him out of the running for president. I sat down a few rods from the polls and thought over the matter of choosing between Edward Everett and John C. Breckenridge, pestered by Governor Wade and H.L. Burns and N.V. and the rest, until finally they left me and when I had made my decision, I found that the polls had closed. I was a good deal relieved.
I am giving you a glimpse into the mind of a conscientious and ignorant voter. If I had read more, my mind would have been made up beforehand, but by some one else. I was not a fool; I was just slow and bewildered. The average voter shoots at the flock and gets it over with. He has had his mind made up for him by some one--and maybe it's just as well: for when he tries, as I did, to make it up for himself, he is apt to find that he has no basis for judgment. That is why all governments, free and the other kind, have always been minority governments, and always will be. And I reckon that's just as well, too.
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.
The question must be settled now in this war.
But I don't know how long I should have studied this matter over in my lonely benightedness, if I had not seen Virginia one night at a war meeting that I sneaked into in the Centre, with a young man dressed in store clothes whom I afterward knew as Will Lockwood, the principal of the Monterey Centre school, who seemingly was going forward to put his name down as enlisted. I jumped in ahead of him, so as to show Virginia that her fellow was not the only patriot, and beat him to it.
"So you are going to fight Kaintucky?" said she to me as if I had engaged to ruin everything she held dear.
"We must save the Union," I said. "I didn't think of you being on the other side!"
"Mr. Lockwood," said she, "this is Teunis Vandemark, an old friend of mine. He's going to fight my friends, too."
In two or three minutes I found that he was from Herkimer County, had lived along the Erie Canal, and was actually the son of my old teacher Lockwood, to whom I had gone when I was wintering with Mrs. Fogg in the old canalling days. He was my best friend during all my service as a soldier--which you will soon see was not long. We left him on the field at Shiloh.