I finally got back home.  When I finished the cabin and got ten acres
cleared I asked for time to go home and git hitched.  The Colonel gave me
$50 as a weddin present and paid for me to ride a boat most of the way.
Took a riverboat to the coast.  There I caught me a coastal steamer that
took me all the way to Savanna.  Boy I sure don't envy those sailors.  I wus
sick near all the way.  I could never sail, but it sure beat ridin cross
country on a wagon.  Lots faster even with the sea sick.

Everyone was fine at home, Maw, Paw and the younguns are fit as a fiddle.
Paw has a family livin on the back fifty workin it for shares.  Irish like
us, but they just came over.  Sis and her husband are also livin and workin
on the place.  Becky's just fine.  She's gonna have another baby.  If this
one makes it that'l be five mouths to feed just in that house!

Nice as it was to see family, what I really came for was Elizabeth.  She and
I got hitched yesterday and spent the night in the Sparta Inn.  I paid three
whole dollars for the best room they had!  It was pretty good, but I can't
wait till we get to the cabin in Navasota and make a real home.  We're gonna
stay till Christmas.  If it don't snow, we'll go back down to Savanna and
take a boat home.  She don't have much, just a trunk and a canvas bag, so
Paw will be able to take us in the buggy.  That'll make the trip a little
faster.  Sure wish they had a railroad nearby.  Them locamotives run at near
fourty miles per hour I hear!  That's flyin!

The only bad news I have is that South Carolina seceeded from the Union on
the 20th.  Word is that the other states in the south are going to follow
pretty quick.  I'm gonna get Elizabeth back to Texas as quick as possible.
General Sam Houston is still holdin on for the Union there.  May be Texas
will stay out of this.  I'm tryin to get Paw to sell the land and move the
family there, but he don't want to.  He's finally making good money off the
farm and even talkin about buying a slave or two to help him.  I told him
bout my experience workin slaves and think I have convinced him to take on
more free men to work the land on shares.  He'll make as much money that way
without goin in debt to buy slaves.  He says there's talk of puttin a
railroad spur five miles from Sparta.  If so he could plant more cotton and
have a way to move it.  Produce farmin would work also.  Trains would give
him a way to sell produce to the cities.  I still think he should move to
Texas with me.  There's plenty of good land there.  A man can make his
fortune if he's willin to work in Texas.  Another year or two, an a couple
of good crops, I'll be able to quit workin for the Colonel and live off my
land there.