His mental eye was as sharp in reading the signs of the times as it had been when at Albany, thirty years before, he made his splendid discovery in electro-magnetism.

He said to me: "This war may last several years, but it can have only one result, for it is simply a question of dynamics.

The stronger force must pulverize the weaker one, and the North will win the day.

When the war is over, the country will not be what it was before; the triumph of the union will leave us a prodigiously centralized government, and the old Calhoun theory of 'State rights' will be dead.

We shall have an inflated currency--an enormous debt with a host of tax-gatherers, and huge pension rolls.