The other political club was the Minute Men. They were mostly young, but conservative, Democrats. They had supported Douglas for the Presidency. They too had had their torchlight processions. They had listened to impassioned harangues from the stump and loudly cheered them. Even their distinguished political leader came during the canvass and spoke to them with rare persuasiveness in defence of squatter sovereignty, and they were proud of “The Little Giant,” as Senator Douglas was popularly called. Then, in their city and State they had been victorious at the polls. While defeated in the nation at large, they felt strong, braced, as they believed themselves to be, by the old and oft-tested doctrines of Democracy. Here was another mighty political force. If armed conflict were to come, on which side would it array itself? While Mr. Douglas, their admired leader, was a staunch Union man, most of these Minute Men, who had so strenuously striven to elect him to the Presidency, after they learned the verdict at the polls, began to drift into the ranks of the secessionists. Nor did they disband; but they began to organize for hostilities. When this was observed, influential Republicans advised the Wide-Awakes not to break up their organizations, but to continue to meet statedly, just as they had during the presidential campaign, to procure arms so far as they were able, and to subject themselves to military drill. And during the winter of 1860–61 these antagonistic political organizations, the Minute Men and the Wide-Awakes, now to all intents and purposes transformed into military bodies, met regularly at their various rendezvous and went through the manual of arms. Late in the evening, I often passed a hall occupied by a company of Minute Men, or secessionists, where I heard them march, countermarch and ground arms. Things like this were unmistakable premonitions of bloody battle. Some of our immediate neighbors and friends evidently already contemplated appealing “from ballots to bullets,” and a shiver of apprehension ran down our spines.