Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/186

 saluting me, said:  “I wonder whether you are not Mr. Carl Schurz?” “Yes, that is my name.”  “I am Frank Blair from St. Louis, Missouri,” said he. His name was well-known to me as one of the bravest anti-slavery men in that slave State—himself the son of Francis P. Blair, who had been one of the confidential friends and advisers of President Andrew Jackson. “A committeeman told me last night,” he said, “that you were in this part of the country, and when I saw you in that buggy, I made a happy guess. Very glad to meet you. Let us sit down in the grass and have some lunch. I have a bottle of claret, and some sandwiches, enough for both of us.” So we sat down, and this was the way in which I made the acquaintance of the famous Frank Blair, one of the most gallant and successful anti-slavery leaders in the South, who, later, after the breaking out of the Civil War, bore such a splendid part in the movement saving St. Louis and the State of Missouri to the Union, who then became a major general in the Union Army, then, being discontented with the Republican reconstruction policy, went over to the Democrats, and was nominated by them for the vice-presidency in 1868; took a somewhat sinister part in the “Liberal-Republican” Convention at Cincinnati in 1872, and whom I met again in the Senate of the United States. Our meeting on the Minnesota prairie was exceedingly pleasant. We laughed much about the fun of this wild campaign, and rejoiced together in the prospects of our cause. Before we parted I inquired of Mr. Blair's driver whether he knew where the City of Lexington was. He had only heard of it, but guessed that if we followed “this road” westward, we should “strike it.” So our buggy trundled on over “this road” several hours longer, when we entered a belt of timber on a creek bottom, and suddenly found ourselves in front of a cluster of log houses, the largest of which seemed to be a tavern.