remont, Republican, and
ex-Vice-President Millard Fillmore, of the Know Nothing Party. James
Buchanan, the Democrat, was elected; the world knows the consequences
of the next four years in and out of Congress. Death and destruction
were in the path. We had John Brown's insurrection, the Christiana
riot, the tragic death of Lovejoy, and hundreds of other events which
I cannot mention at this time.

In 1860 the Presidential campaign came off. The candidates were
Abraham Lincoln, Republican, John C. Breckenridge, Southern Democrat,
and S. A. Douglass, Northern Democrat, with John Bell, Union Democrat.
This was a hot contest. Lincoln was elected.

Then came the Great Rebellion. On April 12, 1862, in company with my
brother, John H. Grant, we left our home in York Co., Pa., for
Washington, D. C., then the center of war activities. Both of us found
employment as teamsters in the Quartermaster's Department. On June 15
we were transferred into Gen. Pope's Army in Virginia. We were
relieved of our teams and put to herding horses and mules throughout
Gen. Pope's campaign. After Pope was defeated at the second battle of
Bull Run, I returned to Washington and went back to driving my team.
In 1863 I was transferred to the woodcutter department as an outside
clerk and put to measuring wood which was cut every two weeks. I also
looked after the commissary. I was there until the Confederates ran us
out in June.

I returned to Washington, D. C., and began my Christian and literary
work. I was converted sixty-five years ago, and joined the A. M. E. Z.
Church, then called Wesley Church. Rev. Abner Bishop was the pastor.
The church was in Peach Bottom Township, York County, Pennsylvania.

I have been always a lover of the Sunday School work. My interest
continues to this day. There is one little incident in my Sunday
School work which I will relate. When I was a boy, with another young
boy like myself, we found that our Sunday School needed some
literature. We succeeded in collecting some money, and Moses Jones and
I found that the nearest place to get the books was Lancaster City,
about twenty-five miles from the church. Undaunted, we took the money
and walked to Lancaster, and back again with the books. Some of those
books remained a great many years in the library of that school.

I am the man who opened the first free school to colored boys in the
District of Columbia. This was in the basement of the old Mt. Zion
Church in 1863 u