The hotel itself swarmed with the opposing factions.
Senator Culver and Judge Kendrick had a room together across the hall from theirs, and next to them four red hot sympathizers with the Union slept on cots in one apartment.

Further down the hall Harvey Whitridge, a state senator, huge of stature, much whiskered, and the proud possessor of a voice that could be heard nearly a mile, occupied a room with Samuel Fowler, a tall, thin, quiet member of the Lower House.
The two were staunch Unionists.
Everybody knew everybody else in this dissevered gathering.

Nearly everybody was kin by blood to everybody else.

In a state affected little by immigration families were more or less related.

If there was to be a war it would be, so far as they were concerned, a war of cousins against cousins.
Colonel Kenton and Harry had scarcely bathed their faces and set their clothing to rights, when there was a sharp knock at the door and the Colonel admitted Raymond Bertrand, the South Carolinian, dark of complexion, volatile and wonderfully neat in apparel.