It is true that it did not even then require the insight of a keen observer to detect in social, as in political gatherings, the constantly widening division between the Northern and Southern elements gathered in the Government City. For myself, I knew little of politics, notwithstanding the fact that from my childhood I had called myself “a pronounced Jeffersonian Democrat.” Naturally, I was an hereditary believer in States’ Rights, the real question, which, in an attempt to settle it, culminated in our Civil War; and I had been bred among the law-makers of the sturdy young State of Alabama, many of whom had served at the State and National capitals with marked distinction; but from my earliest girlhood three lessons had been taught me religiously, viz.: to be proud alike of my name and blood and section; to read my Bible; and, last, to know my “Richmond Enquirer.” Often, as an aid to the performance of this last duty, have I read aloud its full contents, from the rates of advertisement down, until my dear uncle Tom Tunstall has fallen asleep over my childish efforts. It is not, then, remarkable that, upon my arrival, I was at once cognisant of the feeling which was so thinly concealed between the strenuous parties established in the capital. [Illustration: MRS. BENJAMIN FITZPATRICK of Alabama ] During the first half of the Pierce administration, however, though feeling ran high in the Senate and the House, the surface of social life was smiling and peaceful. The President had every reason to feel kindly toward the people of the South who had so unanimously supported him, and he was as indiscriminating and impartial in his attitude to the opposing parties as even the most critical could desire; but, gradually, by a mutual instinct of repulsion that resolved itself into a general consent, the representatives of the two antagonistic sections seldom met save at promiscuous assemblages to which the exigencies of public life compelled them. To be sure, courtesies were exchanged between the wives of some of the Northern and Southern Senators, and formal calls were paid on Cabinet days, as etiquette demanded, upon the ladies of the Cabinet circle; but, by a tacit understanding, even at the entertainments given at the foreign legations, and at the houses of famous Washington citizens, this opposition of parties was carefully considered in the sending out of invitations, in order that no unfortunate _rencontre_ might occur between uncongenial guests.