Chapter I: Introduction

PRELIMINARY NOTE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

I Incidents of my Early Life
II Life as a Store-boy and Clerk
III Changes and Progress
IV Schools and School-keeping
V Groton in 1835
VI Groton in 1835--Continued
VII Beginnings in Business
VIII First Experience in Politics
IX The Election of 1840
X Massachusetts Men in the Forties
XI The Election of 1842, and the Dorr Rebellion
XII The Legislature of 1847
XIII Legislative Session of 1848--Funeral of John Quincy Adams
XIV The Legislature of 1849
XV Massachusetts Politics and Massachusetts Politicians, 1850-51
and 1852
XVI Acton Monument
XVII Sudbury Monument
XVIII Louis Kossuth
XIX The Coalition and the State Constitutional Convention of 1853
XX The Year 1854
XXI Organization of the Republican Party in Massachusetts in 1855,
and the Events Preceding the War
XXII As Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education
XXIII Phi Beta Kappa Address at Cambridge
XXIV The Peace Convention of 1861
XXV The Opening of the War
XXVI The Military Commission of 1862 and General Fremont
XXVII Organization of the Internal Revenue System in the United States