All Appointments Hurt. Five Friends Are Made

[t]his Free And Easy Old-bachelor Sort Of Life Is Quite Full Of Fun And Jollity. Pease And Myself Room Together; And Everything Like Order And Neatness Is Banished From Our Presence As A Nuisance--old Letters And Old Boots And Shoes, Duds Clean And Duds Dirty, Books And Newspapers, Tooth-brushes, Shoe-brushes, And Clothes-brushes, All Heaped Together On Chairs, Settees, Etc., In Dusty And "most Admired Confusion." Now, What Is There Imaginable In Clean, Tidy Private Life Equal To This?

In Sumter And Other Counties [in South Carolina] The Whites Are Resorting To Intimidation And Violence To Prevent The Colored People From Organizing For The Elections. The Division There Is Still On The Color Line. Substantially All The Whites Are Democrats And All The Colored People Are Republicans. There Is No Political Principle In Dispute Between Them. The Whites Have The Intelligence, The Property, And The Courage Which Make Power. The Negroes Are For The Most Part Ignorant, Poor, And Timid. My View Is That The Whites Must Be Divided There Before A Better State Of Things Will Prevail.

Disunion And Civil War Are At Hand; And Yet I Fear Disunion And War Less Than Compromise. We Can Recover From Them. The Free States Alone, If We Must Go On Alone, Will Make A Glorious Nation.

My Father And Mother In 1817 Were Forty-nine Days On The Road With Their Emigrant Wagons [from Vermont] To Ohio. More Than Two Days For Each Hour That I Spent In The Same Journey.

I Am Succeeding Very Well So Far With My Legging, But It Is A Very Mean Business For A Man That Has Been Well Brought Up To Engage In. It Is The Only Way To Get A Bill From Cincinnati Through, So It Must Be Done.