That expectation and that hope remained uppermost in my mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of 1863-4.

The passage of that bill, and my promotion, blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the further West.
In the late summer of 1854 I rejoined my family, to find in it a son whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama.

I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our support.

My wife had a farm near St.Louis, to which we went, but I had no means to stock it.

A house had to be built also.