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--whi