When I was
seventeen years of age, I was sent North to complete my education,
at Yale College, and was just about commencing my senior year, when I
received this letter from my father."
Here George paused, and drew from his pocket a bundle of papers,
carefully tied up, and, producing a letter, from which the writing was
almost obliterated, he handed it to Frank, who read aloud as follows:
CATAHOOLA PARISH, _February_ 12, 1861.
MY DEAR GEORGE:
Your letter of the 2d ult. was duly received.
Although your ideas of the civil war, to which you seem to look
forward with such anxiety, are rather crude, you are, in the main,
correct in your conjectures as to our intentions. Secession is a
fixed fact. You know it has often been discussed by our leading
men, and the election of Mr. Lincoln has only served to
precipitate our action. Had he been defeated, it might have been
put off four years longer; but it would be certain to come then.
For years the heaven-sanctioned institution of slavery has been
subjected to all the attacks that the fiendish imaginations of the
Yankee abolitionists could suggest, and we are determined to bear
with them no longer.
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