Fortunately for my father, he had on hand a task of wide importance in connection with the recently freed slaves. From the beginning of the war he had labored to bring about the freeing of the negroes. It had not been five months in progress when he called a meeting of anti-slavery men at his office “to take into consideration measures tending to the emancipation of slaves as a war policy.” This resulted in the formation of the Emancipation League, the _Commonwealth_ being once more brought to life as its organ. As my father’s duties on the Sanitary Commission took him frequently to Washington, in 1861–62, he was able to urge upon the President the necessity of emancipating the negroes. But he well understood that so tremendous a change involved the making of preparations beforehand. In September, 1862, the month when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, we find him writing from Washington to a friend of his plan for the creation of a bureau to inquire into the actual condition of the freedmen, their wants and their capacities. In 1863 Stanton, then Secretary of War, appointed a Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, the members of it being my father, Robert Dale Owen, and James McKay. So, when we came to New York for a change of air and scene, shortly after little Sammy’s death, we found my father busy in the office of the commission, in spite of his sufferings from the gout. It was always his policy to gather facts and knowledge before taking action. Hence the many reforms which he instituted were lasting. They were not built for a day, and as he took no thought of his own glorification, no personal element deflected them from the right track. Evidently it was important to ascertain what the negroes had done with their freedom in other English-speaking countries. So the commission thoroughly investigated conditions in the Province of Ontario (then Canada West), where twenty thousand colored people were living, and made an exhaustive report. The labors of the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission were those of a pioneer body. They were carried on later by the Freedmen’s Bureau. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XIII THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF LIFE IN THE CIVIL WAR _How We Dressed and Danced in the ’Sixties.—War Prices.—Mrs. Jared Sparks.—Visit of the Russian Fleet.—The Brain Club.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.—Ralph Waldo Emerson.—William R. Alger.—William M. Hunt.—“Mamma’s Owls.”—William and Henry James.—A Clever Group of Society Women.—A Historic Nose-pulling._