It was not until March that I began dimly to comprehend that something was transpiring which would involve every individual. Dr. Goree, our neighbour planter, happened to meet Mr. W. H. Crawford, an ex-Representative of Georgia, at our store, and began discussing politics. Their determined accents and resolute gestures roused my curiosity, and I heard them say that the States of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and others, had already formed a separate government, and that one called Jeff Davis had been proclaimed President of the new government; and they wondered why Arkansas was so slow to join the Confederates, etc., etc. This was news to me, and when they unfolded their respective newspapers and read extracts from them, it dawned upon me that if I wished to post myself upon the grave national affairs, I should have to read those stupid sheets which hitherto I had regarded as being only fit for merchants and bearded men. Thus stimulated to think that the events of the time affected the people of Arkansas County, even youths like myself, I began to read the Pine Bluff paper, and to be more inquisitive; and it was not long before I had a vague conception that the country was in a terribly disturbed state, and that there would be war. Notwithstanding the information gleaned from persons who gave themselves little trouble to satisfy a strange boy, it was not until young Dan Goree returned from Nashville College that I could assimilate properly all that I had heard. Young Dan was a boy of about my own age, and being the son of such a politician as Dr. Goree, was naturally much more advanced in political matters than I. He it was who, in friendly converse, acted as my Mentor, and gave me the first intelligent exposition of how affairs stood between the two sections of the Union. It was from him I learned that the election of Abe Lincoln, in the November previous, had created a hostile feeling in the South, because this man had declared himself opposed to slavery; and as soon as he became President, in March, he would do all in his power to free all the slaves. Of course, said he, in that event all slave-holders would be ruined. His father owned about one hundred and twenty slaves, worth from $500 to $1200 a head, and to deprive him of property that he had bought with cash was pure robbery. That was the reason that all the people of the South were rising against the Northern people, and they would fight, to the last man. When the State of Arkansas ‘seceded,’ then every man and boy would have to proceed to the war and drive those wretched Abolitionists back to their homes, which would be an easy task, as one Southerner was better than ten of those Northern fellows, many of whom had never seen a gun! Dan thought that the boys of the South, armed with whips, would be quite sufficient to lick the thieving hounds!