blue with men in the cars, and on top of
the cars, and in the caboose, and on the cowcatcher, always going south
and never north. For "Down South" were many Rebels, and all along the way
south were Copperheads, and they all wanted to come north and kill us, so
soldiers had to go down there and fight them.

And I marveled much that if God hated Copperheads, as our preacher said He
did, why He didn't send lightning and kill them, just in a second, as He
had Si Johnson. And then all that would have to be done would be to send
for a doctor to see that they were surely dead, and a preacher to pray,
and the neighbors would dress them in their best Sunday suits of black,
folding their hands very carefully across their breasts, then we would
bury them deep, filling in the dirt and heaping it up, patting it all down
very carefully with the back of a spade, and then go away and leave them
until Judgment-Day.

Copperheads were simply men who hated Lincoln. The name came from
copperhead-snakes, which are worse than rattlers, for rattlers rattle and
give warning. A rattler is an open enemy, but you never know that a
copperhead is around until he strikes. He lies low in the swale and
watches his chance. "He is the worstest snake that am."

It was Abe Lincoln of Springfield who was fighting the Rebels that were
trying to wreck the country and spread red ruin. The Copperheads were
wicked folks at the North who sided with the Rebels. Society was divided
into two classes: those who favored Abe Lincoln, and those who told lies
about him. All the people I knew and loved, loved Abe Lincoln.

I was born at Bloomington, Illinois, through no choosing of my own, and
Bloomington is further famous as being the birthplace of the Republican
party. When a year old I persuaded my parents to move seven miles north to
the village of Hudson, that then had five houses, a church, a store and a
blacksmith-shop. Many of the people I knew, knew Lincoln, for he used to
come to Bloomington several times a year "on the circuit" to try cases,
and at various times made speeches there. When he came he would tell
stories at the Ashley House, and when he was gone these stories would be
repeated by everybody. Some of these stories must have been peculiar, for
I once heard my mother caution my father not to tell any more "Lincoln
stories" at the dinner-table when we had company.

And once Lincoln gave a lecture at the Presbyterian Church on the
"Progress of Man,"