My father, a skillful physician by profession, was by taste and inclination a controversal writer, a contributor to the newspapers, mixing up in the stir of the times. Before the Civil War his energy was devoted to a large and lucrative practice coupled with activities, social and political. At the opening of the struggle between the North and South his sympathies and associations ardently enlisted him in the fortunes of his native State, and he furthered by writing and personal work the adoptio