During the reign of that un-American political heresy, popularly called Know-Nothingism, in 1854, 1855, and 1856, Mr. Harriman was its firm and unyielding enemy. In a discussion of this question with Hon. Cyrus Barton at Loudon Center, Mr. Harriman had closed his first speech, and Mr. Barton had just begun a reply, when he dropped dead on the platform,--a tragedy which lingers sadly in the memory of his friendly antagonist of that day. The outbreak of the civil war began an era in the life of every public man in the nation. It projected issues which made party allegiance a secondary affair. It sent many honest and earnest men across the party lines, while some of our best citizens simply took their stand for the time being outside all political folds, independent, and ready for whatever calls the exigencies of the country might give forth. In that fateful spring of 1861, Mr. Harriman became the editor and one of the proprietors of the _Weekly Union_ at Manchester, which heartily espoused the war policy of Mr. Lincoln's administration for the preservation of the republic, and thus found himself the leader and spokesman of what were known as the "War Democrats." He was placed in nomination as a candidate for governor of the state, at a large mass convention of this class of voters, held at Manchester in February, 1863, and this movement resulted in defeating a choice by the people and throwing the election into the legislature. No man uttered braver or more eloquent words for the Union cause than Mr. Harriman, and his tongue and pen were an important element in the rousing of the citizens of New Hampshire to the graver duties of the hour. In August, 1862, he was made colonel of the Eleventh New Hampshire regiment of volunteers. He led this regiment to the field, and was at its head most of the time until the close of the war, except the four months, from May to September, 1864, when he was an inmate of Confederate prisons. With some other captured Union officers, he was, for seven weeks of this time, imprisoned in that part of Charleston, S. C, which was most exposed to the fire of the Union guns from Morris island, but providentially, though that part of the doomed city was destroyed, no harm came to him from the guns of his fellow-loyalists.