In the spring of 1860, the Republican National Convention was held at Chicago, and one fine morning I went to the railway station to greet the New York delegation on its way thither. Among the delegates whom I especially recall were William M. Evarts, under whose Secretaryship of State I afterward served as minister at Berlin, and my old college friend, Stewart L. Woodford, with whom I was later in close relations during his term as lieutenant-governor of New York and minister to Spain. The candidate of these New York delegates was of course Mr. Seward, and my most devout hopes were with him, but a few days later came news that the nomination had been awarded to Mr. Lincoln. Him we had come to know and admire during his debates with Douglas while the senatorial contest was going on in the State of Illinois; still the defeat of Mr. Seward was a great disappointment, and hardly less so in Michigan than in New York. In the political campaign which followed I took no direct part, though especially aroused by the speeches of a new man who had just appeared above the horizon,--Carl Schurz. His arguments seemed to me by far the best of that whole campaign--the broadest, the deepest, and the most convincing. My dear and honored father, during the months of July, August, and the first days of September, was slowly fading away on his death-bed. Yet he was none the less interested in the question at issue, and every day I sat by his bedside and read to him the literature bearing upon the contest; but of all the speeches he best liked those of this new orator--he preferred them, indeed, to those of his idol Seward. I have related in another place how, years afterward, Bismarck asked me, in Berlin, to what Carl Schurz's great success in America was due, and my answer to this question. Mr. Lincoln having been elected, I went on with my duties as before, but the struggle was rapidly deepening. Soon came premonitions of real conflict, and, early in the following spring, civil war was upon us. My teaching went on, as of old, but it became more direct. In order to show what the maintenance of a republic was worth, and what patriots had been willing to do for their country in a struggle not unlike ours, I advised my students to read Motley's ``History of the Dutch Republic,'' and I still think it was good advice. Other works, of a similar character, showing how free peoples have conducted long and desperate wars for the maintenance of their national existence and of liberty, I also recommended, and with good effect.