Very few Senators at that period kept house in Washington. At Mrs. Shipman's boarding-house on Seventh Street, lived Senators Fessenden, Grimes, Foot, and Representatives Morrill, of Vermont, and Washburne, of Illinois; and there I also found quarters. As this was only a block distant from the Trumbulls', and as I had received a cordial welcome from them, I was soon on terms of intimacy with the family. Mr. Trumbull was then forty-eight-years of age, five feet ten and one half inches in height, straight as an arrow, weighing one hundred and sixty-seven pounds, of faultless physique, in perfect health, and in manners a cultivated gentleman. Mrs. Trumbull was thirty-seven years old, of winning features, gracious manners, and noble presence. Five children had been born to them, all sons. Walter, fifteen years of age, the eldest then living, had recently returned from an ocean voyage on the warship Vandalia, under Commander S. Phillips Lee. A more attractive family group, or one more charming in a social way or more kindly affectioned one to another, I have never known. Civilization could show no finer type. The Thirty-seventh Congress met in a state of great depression. Disaster had befallen the armies of the Union, but the defeat at Bull Run was not so disheartening as the subsequent inaction both east and west. McClellan on the Potomac had done nothing but organize and parade. Frémont on the Mississippi had done worse than nothing. He had surrounded himself with a gang of thieves whose plundering threatened to bankrupt the treasury, and when he saw exposure threatening he issued a military order emancipating slaves, the revocation of which by the President very nearly upset the Government. The popular demand for a blow at slavery as the cause of the rebellion had increased in proportion as the military operations had been disappointing. Lincoln believed that the time had not yet come for using that weapon. He revoked Frémont's order. He thereby saved Kentucky to the Union, and he still held emancipation in reserve for a later day; but he incurred the risk of alienating the radical element of the Republican party--an honest, fiery, valiant, indispensable wing of the forces supporting the Union. The explosion which took place in this division of the party was almost but not quite fatal. Many letters received by Trumbull at this juncture were angry and some mournful in the extreme. The following written by Mr. M. Carey Lea, of Philadelphia, touches upon a danger threatening the national finances, in consequence of this episode: PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 1, 1861.