Page:A narrative of service with the Third Wisconsin Infantry.djvu/19



HE presidential election of 1860 found me just become of age. I exercised my newly-acquired rights of citizenship, in the then little village of Waupun, Wisconsin, by participating in the hurrahing and torchlight processions that in those days characterized a political campaign. I was a carpenter by trade, but immediately after the election went to teach a country school in the backwoods town of Buena Vista, in Portage County. Daily papers in that sparsely settled community were of course an unknown luxury, and it was only through the weeklies that we heard of the gathering storm in the Nation. From them we learned how State after State in the South were holding conventions, that they were passing ordinances of secession, and that the delegates were gathering at Montgomery, Alabama, to organize the Confederate States of America.