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From Youth to Age as an American. 147 ond year of the war, that it would end, apparently, only by the exhaustion of resources of the weaker side. Neither influence of family ties or of friendship caused men to swerve, nor did past service hold the regard of the people, after a defection from the principal point in dispute— the right to destroy the Union of States which constituted the nation. The fate of General Joseph Lane illustrates what I mean. His character and conduct made him the idol of the people of Oregon until, from his seat in the United States Senate, he said, If the North invades the South it will be over my dead body. ' ' Men noted with pride every young man who went East and joined the army, and men who took ad- vantage of the national financial straits to pay their just obligations in anything less valuable than gold and silver coin were held in contempt. In my view, the influence of the Civil War on the people of Oregon was an elevation of character and an increase of patriotism, and had the effect, on myself, of stimulating my attention to sheep husbandry as one means of furnishing the raw material for clothing, and thereby proving that cotton was not king." The tenor of a short essay on sheep husbandry, read before the State Agricultural Society, procured me a letter of thanks from Governor Gibbs, and I think had later some influence in my being elected to its secretaryship, putting me into the posi- tion of editor of the "Willamette Farmer, " as one of the conditions of the society's giving a bonus of $1,800.00 to its publisher. I think it may have also had some influence in returning me to the legislature in 1868. CHAPTER VI. TEN YEARS OF MY MIDDLE LIFE IN OREGON. In 1862, when I was chosen as a representative of loyal adopted citizenship, the following may be given as to my status as a unit of society : a cultivator of forty to sixty acres annually, of which seventeen acres might be called the home