CHAPTER XIV
Kentucky in the Summer and Fall of 1861
I REACHED Louisville during the last week of August,
1861, and took a room at the Galt House, the largest
and best hotel in the city, kept by Captain Silas Miller,
well known throughout the Southwest as a successful
commander of Ohio and Mississippi steamboats. He was a
staunch and enthusiastic Unionist, owing to which his
house was sought by the Kentucky loyalists and shunned
by the rebel sympathizers. Louisville could boast of a
good deal of commercial activity in ordinary times, but
its business was then at a standstill from the stoppage of
trade between North and South, and the almost entire
cessation of steamboating on the Ohio. Many of the
business men and the majority of the young men of the place
had gone South to join their fate to that of the Confederacy.
Hence, the streets wore a very quiet and even
deserted look. The hotel, too, was almost empty. I had
a few letters of introduction, one to Mr. Speed, the
postmaster, a friend of President Lincoln and brother of the
future Attorney-General, and another to a Northern family
by the name of Cowan. Both led to very pleasant, though
limited, social relations, as four-fifths of the upper class
favored the South and showed the utmost animosity
towards the loyal element. I also made the acquaintance of
George D. Prentice, the poet-journalist, editor of the
Louisville Journal, and of his principal assistants, with
all of whom I was soon on such good terms that their
editorial rooms became a familiar resort for me. Mr.
Tyler, the agent of the New York Associated Press, a native
of Massachusetts, and his wife likewise became my friends.
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