bell-like tones of the Jenny Lind voice in "Home, Sweet Home," and
"The Last Rose of Summer" still come back to me, but too long after
for me to make, or imagine, comparisons between it and the vocalism of
Grisi, Sontag and Parepa-Rosa.

Meeting Mr. Barnum at Madison Square Garden in New York, when he was
running one of his entertainments there, I told him the story, and we
had a hearty laugh, both of us very much pleased, he very much surprised
to find in me a former employee.

One of my earliest yearnings was for a home. I cannot recall the time
when I was not sick and tired of our migrations between Washington City
and the two grand-paternal homesteads in Tennessee. The travel counted
for much of my aversion to the nomadic life we led. The stage-coach
is happier in the contemplation than in the actuality. Even when the
railways arrived there were no sleeping cars, the time of transit three
or four days and nights. In the earlier journeys it had been ten or
twelve days.

Chapter the Second

Slavery the Trouble-Maker--Break-Up of the Whig Party and Rise of the
Republican--The Key--Sickle's Tragedy--Brooks and Sumner--Life at
Washington in the Fifties

I

Whether the War of Sections--as it should be called, because, except in
Eastern Tennessee and in three of the Border States, Maryland, Kentucky
and Missouri, it was nowise a civil war--could have been averted must
ever remain a question of useless speculation. In recognizing the
institution of African slavery, with no provision for its ultimate
removal, the Federal Union set out embodying the seeds of certain
trouble. The wiser heads of the Constitutional Convention perceived this
plainly enough; its dissonance to the logic of their movement; on the
sentimental side its repugnancy; on the practical side its doubtful
economy; and but for the tobacco growers and the cotton planters it had
gone by the board. The North soon found slave labor unprofitable and rid
itself of slavery. Thus, restricted to the South, it came to represent
in the Southern mind a "right" which the South was bound to defend.

Mr. Slidell told me in Paris that Louis Napoleon had once said to him in
answer to his urgency for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy:
"I have talked the matter over with Lord Palmerston and we are both of
the opinion that as long as African slavery exists at the South, France
and England cannot recognize the Confederacy. They do not dem