Our train on that first official journey to Washington proved to be a kind of inchoative “Congressional Limited.” We found many of our fellow-passengers to be native Alabamians, the majority being on government business bent. Among them were my husband’s confrère from southern Alabama, Senator Fitzpatrick and his wife, and a friendship was then and there begun among us, which lasted uninterruptedly until death detached some of the parties to it; also Congressman Dowdell, “dear old Dowdell,” as my husband and everyone in the House shortly learned to call him, and James L. Orr of South Carolina, who afterward became Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Minister to Russia under President Grant. Mr. Orr, late in 1860, was one of the three commissioners sent by South Carolina to President Buchanan to arbitrate on the question of the withdrawal of United States troops from Forts Sumter and Moultrie, in Charleston Harbour. Nor should I omit to name the most conspicuous man on that memorable north-bound train, Congressman W. R. W. Cobb, who called himself the “maker of Senators,” and whom people called the most successful vote-poller in the State of Alabama. Mr. Cobb resorted to all sorts of tricks to catch the popular votes, such as the rattling of tinware and crockery—he had introduced bills to secure indigent whites from a seizure for debt that would engulf all their possessions, and in them had minutely defined all articles that were to be thus exempt, not scorning to enumerate the smallest items of the kitchen—, and he delighted in the singing of homely songs composed for stump purposes. One of these which he was wont to introduce at the end of a speech, and which always seemed to be especially his own, was called “The Homestead Bill.” Of this remarkable composition there were a score of verses, at least, that covered every possible possession which the heart of the poor man might crave, ranging from land and mules to household furniture. The song began, “Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm!” and Mr. Cobb would sing it in stentorian tones, winking, as he did so, to first one and then another of his admiring listeners, and punctuating his phrases by chewing, with great gusto, a piece of onion and the coarsest of corn “pone.” These evidences of his democracy gave huge delight to the masses, though it aroused in me, a young wife, great indignation, that, in the exigencies of a public career my husband should be compelled to enter a contest with such a man. To me it was the meeting of a Damascus blade and a meat-axe, and in my soul I resented it.