As a boy, living
in Mississippi, he had joined the Confederate army when he was
preparing for the University of Virginia, had attained the rank of
captain, had become General Forrest's private secretary, and had
written--or largely helped to write--General Forrest's autobiography.
He was idealistic, enthusiastic, of an inventive genius, with a really
remarkable command of English, and an absorbing love of books. My
mother's father was a Barr, from the north of Ireland, a Scotch-Irish
Presbyterian, her mother was a Woodfalk of Jackson County, Tennessee, a
Methodist. The members of the family were practical, strong-willed,
able men and women, but with no bent, that I know of, toward either law
or politics.
And yet, one of the most vivid memories of my childhood in Jackson is
of attending a political rally with my grandfather and hearing a Civil
War veteran declaim against Republicans who "waved the bloody shirt"--a
memory so strong that for years afterward I never saw a Republican
without expecting to see the gory shirt on his back, and wondering
vaguely why he was not in jail. When I came to Denver, where the
Republicans were dominant, I felt myself in the land of the enemy.
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