ay the war come.
You've seen the seal o' this State, haven't you, child?--two men
standin' together holdin' each other's hands, and the motto around
'em: 'United we stand; divided we fall.' Well, that's jest the way it
was in Kentucky before the war come and sp'iled it all. Kentuckians
stood together and loved each other, and nobody ever thought they
could be divided. But all of a sudden a change come over everybody.
Folks that'd been friendly all their lives stopped speakin' to each
other; if two neighbors come together and stopped to talk, there'd be
high words between 'em, and they'd both be mad when they parted. Out
in our neighborhood, instead o' talkin' about the weather and the
crops and folks' health and the sermon they'd heard Sunday and the
weddin's that were goin' to be, why, it was nothin' but slavery and
secession and union and States' rights, and it looked like there was a
two-edged sword in every house.

"Father was mighty fond o' readin'. He took two or three papers, and
every Sunday mornin' and on their way back home from town the
neighbors'd drop in and hear the news; and any time you'd pass his
house you'd see a porch full o' men listenin' to Father readin' a
speech that somebody'd made in Congress or in the legislature, and
Mother, she'd leave her work and come to the door every now and then
and listen and, maybe, put in a word.

"I ricollect hearin' Father talk about Crittenden's big speech, the
one made in Congress when he was tryin' to head off the war. Father
thought pretty near as much of Crittenden as he did of Clay. There
never was a speech o' Crittenden's that he didn't read, and he'd say,
'I'd rather handle words like that man does than to be the King of
England; and,' says he, 'it's all jest like he says; Kentucky will
stand by the Union and die by the Union.' Says he, 'She couldn't do
otherwise without goin' back on her own word, and that word's cyarved
in stone too. There it is,' says he, 'on the block o' marble that we
sent to help build the monument at Washington:

"'The first state to enter the union will be the last to leave it.'

"Says he, 'We can't go back on that word.'

"And then he turns around to Mother and says he, 'Deborah, what do you
think about it?' I can see Mother now. She'd been fryin' some meat,
and she turned around with the fork in her hand and looked at Father a
minute before she answered him, and says she, 'What's the use in
askin' me what I think? I'm nothin'