one am
The veterans of the blue and the gray sat on the Rye House porch together , swapping tales and borrowing tobacco as amicably as though they had never done their best to exterminate one another . `` As for Abe Lincoln , '' declared Major Fitch , an ancient confederate , `` if it had n't been for him Gawd knows what we 'd ` a ' had to talk about in these dry days . I tell you , sah , we ought to be eternally grateful to Abe Lincoln . I for one am . I was a clerk in a country store when the war broke out and I 'd ` a ' been there yet if it was n't for the war . I 'm here to say it made me and made my fam ` ly . We were bawn fighters -- my fo ' brothers and I -- and up to the sixties we were always in trouble for brawling .