although suffering much from hunger and their cramped positions. This news was like a stimulant to us, and we ate our bacon and bread with a relish and obtained some much needed sleep. During the night although still anxious for our Spirit Lake detachment but believing they must have arrived at the Colony before the storm and with some fears that our teamster, Mr. Slawson, an old man then seventy years of age, who from the start had never spared himself nor flinched from his severe duties, and Major Williams then over sixty years of age, who when they saw there was no probability of crossing Cylinder Creek on Saturday night, started back in the face of the storm with one team, for the Colony, and on the skeleton of the wagon, we having used the box as a boat.

At early dawn Monday morning we again started for the creek. The storm had abated, but the cold was intense, the mercury marking 34 degrees below zero. As we came to the creek we saw the men on the other side getting ready to cross. We found the ice even over the current strong enough to bear a team and our loaded wagons which we assisted across, and I found my pony still alive although exposed to all the storm with nothing to break the wind and no food or water for two days and nights. The men all reached Shippey's by 8 o'clock and then had the first food they had eaten since Saturday noon. How they all lived through these two terrible nights wet, cold, and hungry as they were, has always been a wonder to me, and still is. As to how the men

spent those two days and nights only those who were there can tell, and to relate their experience, no one can better give all the facts than my friend Ex-Gov. C. C. Carpenter, whose advice and cool deliberate judgment had much to do with saving the lives of the entire party. A detailed and correct report of how the detachment which went to the Lakes can only be made by some of those brave men, who endured that terrible march. And I know of no one so well qualified to relate the incidents from the time I left them at the crossing of the West Fork of the Des Moines as Lieut. Maxwell and Wm. Laughlin whose names are engraved on this tablet. They can tell how, after marching across the divide from the river to the Lakes they visited one cabin after another only to find the dead and mutilated bodies of entire families where they had fallen when shot or brained with a hatchet or club; or the body impaled and slashed with the knife of the heart

less and cruel savage; how they as best they could collected their familes together and buried them; how, tired and hungry, they started on the return march to be met, when far out on the inhospitable prairie, by the relentless blizzard; how they passed that terrible Saturday night, wet, cold, nearly starved, with no shelter from the biting wind or driving snow; how, when all hope was nearly gone, they each made a final effort to reach the timber and shelter; how Capt. Johnson and Wm. Burkholder, differing with others as to the best way to get around a pond, separated, never again to see a friendly face this side eternity; how the survivors, a few at a time, had reached the protecting timber, or dug a hole in a snow drift, and there protected sat out the storm; and the friends who were out from the Colony looking for them found them so exhausted, frozen and dazed as to hardly know these friends when they saw them,-in fact a full recital of all the facts can only be given by those who experienced them.

As soon as the men had eaten their breakfast they started again on the homeward march, leaving all that they could not carry for the teams to bring when they came on. We spent the first night at McKnight's Point, and here Major Williams overtook us; from this point there was but little to do but get to the nearest settlement where food and shelter could be had, and many left the main body and made for the nearest cabins. at Dacotah and on the West Fork, a sufficient number remaining with the teams to assist in bad places, and thus we arrived in Fort Dodge, and for the first time in seventeen days I removed my overcoat and had a night's rest.

We had heard that some of the party that went to the lakes had reached the Irish Colony, and some had come in to the river above, and did not know that any were still missing, and as some were coming in individually, or in small parties for several days, we still hoped that all might have escaped. As soon as it was learned that Capt. Johnson and Wm. Burkholder did not come in, parties were sent out who scoured the country for weeks, but without finding any trace of the missing; and it was years before the bones of these two brave men were found where they had lain down when overcome by the piercing wind and blinding snow of that terrible blizzard, having made a desperate fight for life, and having traveled many miles nearly parallel with the river timber in their vain efforts to reach the settlements.

To Major Wm. Williams, an old man with wonderful powers of endurance and sinews of steel all were attached. He endured all the hardships of the march, and all the exposure and want, the same as any private, with no word of complaint. Geo. B. Sherman of Company "A" was chosen Commissary of the expedition, and a more thankless task, or one requiring more hard work, no one had. To keep a hundred hungry men from eating up all the stores for a two week's trip in three days was almost impossible, but he did his duty and tried to piece out our scanty rations and give each man his just share.

To the entire expedition I have ever had a warm and brotherly feeling, but to Co. "A," from whom I received so many kind words, and particularly to Lieut. Stratton, Angus McBane, Ex-Gov. C. C. Carpenter, Wm. Burkholder, Rodney Smith, to whom I so frequently turned for advice in trying times, who were all so willing and ready to do everything possible for each other and for the success of the expedition, many of whom were then and have been through life my warm personal friends. Men, whose unselfish, generous, energetic, hard working, toiling days and sleepless nights were spent to assist entire strangers, could not be otherwise than good citizens, valuable to the nation, the state, and the community in which they lived.

GOVERNOR KIRKWOOD'S FIRST MEETING WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

EDITOR IOWA HISTORICAL RECORD:

N compliance with your request I submit an account of my first meeting with Abraham Lincoln. The nomination of Abraham Lincoln by the Republicans in 1860 as the candidate for the Presidency was very favorably received by the great body of the party, although there was some disappointment felt in some of the eastern States, particularly by the friends of Mr. Seward, and to a less extent by the friends of Mr. Chase. But in the West, especially by that

portion of our people whom Mr. Lincoln so aptly afterwards called "the plain people," the feeling of his party friends in his favor was earnest and enthusiastic. His great debate with Mr. Douglas in 1858, and his Cooper Institute speech in 1860 had convinced everybody of his great ability, his thorough understanding of the great questions involved in the pending contest, his conservative views on those questions, his sterling honesty, his candor and his courage. In short, it was thoroughly believed, that although he was not, as the term was then understood, a politician-that he was a statesman in the better sense of the term. After his election two elements of apposition to his administration rapidly developed. Firstly, the secession element, composed of those who had, ever since the days of Nullification, determined upon the dissolution of the Union, and secondly, of those who earnestly sought to force Mr. Lincoln and his friends, through fear, into some compromise which wovld give to slavery all it contended for.

I had not ever met Mr. Lincoln, nor did I expect to attend his inauguration. But as time passed on I thought it due to him and to the official position I then held in my State, to pay my respects to him before he left his home for Washington. I was further led to do this by the increasing excitement and alarm in the country, growing out of the increasing boldness and power of the secession movement in the South and the increasing efforts of those North and South who clamored for "peace at any price," and it is but candid to say that I desired to form for myself, from a personal interview with Mr. Lincoln, a more satisfactory opinion than I otherwise could of his "equipment" to meet the unexpected and terrible responsibilities that he would probably have to meet.

Accordingly early in January, 1861, I went to Springfield Illinois. I did not expect that I should meet anyone there whom I knew, unless it might be Mr. Hatch, who was then the Secretary of State of Illinois, whom I had met at Chicago at the Republican National Convention in 1860, and with whom I had there formed a slight acquaintance. I did meet

him, either on the evening of my arrival at Springfield or the next morning. He introduced me to Gov. Yates. I told them in general terms the object of my visit, and that I was embarrassed to know when and where I could have an interview with Mr. Lincoln. They told me that he had a room or rooms in the city, at which he attended every day between certain hours, but that his time, on such occasions, was so occupied by his many callers that there was neither time nor opportunity for such an interview as they understood I wanted, and they proposed that at an hour they named they would accompany me to his residence and introduce me to him, and I could have my interview there. I hesitated somewhat about going to his residence, as he might perhaps consider it an intrusion, but they insisted he would not so consider it, and as I was anxious to accomplish my purpose and to return home as soon as possible, I consented to go with them. We started at the time appointed and on our way we saw at some distance before us and coming toward us a tall man of somewhat remarkable appearance. Before we met, either Gov. Yates or Secretary Hatch said, "There is Lincoln now." As we met they shook hands and I was introduced to Mr. Lincoln, and after a short conversation I told him in general terms the purpose of my visit and that at the suggestion of the Governor and Secretary we were on our way to visit him at his residence, as they had informed me there would not be very favorable opportunity for a private conversation with him at his rooms up town. He replied in substance that was all right -that he was going up town on an errand and that the gentlemen with me and myself should go on to his home and he would soon return. As we were about to separate he said to me that if it would suit me as well, he would call on me at my room in the hotel at which I was stopping, and that we would be less liable to interruption there than at his house. I was not then (nor am I now) much acquainted with the etiquette of calls upon or by Presidents or Presidents-elect, and I have since thought that he did not know much more on