pronounced and which now and again, in one form or another, he renewed,
was not in accord with ours. I recall very well the discussions they
had, and remember how formally my mother would begin her little
arguments: "Friend, I am moved to say to thee"; and then she would go
on to tell him gently that all men should be brothers, and that there
should be peace on earth, and that no man should oppress his brother in
any way, and that slavery ought not to exist.

"What! madam," Orme would exclaim, "this manner of thought in a Southern
family!" And so he in turn would go on repeating his old argument of
geography, and saying how England must side with the South, and how the
South must soon break with the North. "This man Lincoln, if elected,"
said he, "will confiscate every slave in the Southern States. He will
cripple and ruin the South, mark my words. He will cost the South
millions that never will be repaid. I cannot see how any Virginian can
fail to stand with all his Southern brothers, front to front against the
North on these vital questions."

"I do not think the South would fight the North over slavery alone. The
South loves the flag, because she helped create it as much or more than
the North. She will not bear treason to the flag." Thus my father.

"It would be no treason," affirmed Orme, "but duty, if that flag became
the flag of oppression. The Anglo-Saxon has from King John down refused
to be governed unjustly and oppressively."

And so they went on, hour after hour, not bitterly, but hotly, as was
the fashion all over the land at that time. My father remained a Whig,
which put him in line, sometimes, with the Northern men then coming into
prominence, such as Morrill of New England, and young Sherman from