CHAPTER II.

Mr. Lincoln's Journey to Washington.-Ceremonies of the Inauguration.-The Inaugural Speech of President Lincoln.-The Spirit of the New Administration.—Its Financial Condition.-Embussy from the Southern Confederacy.-Perfidious Treatment of the Southern Commissioners.- Preparations for War.-The Military Bills of the Confederate Congress.-General Beauregard.-Fortifications of Charleston Harber.Naval Preparations of the Federal Government.--Attempted Reinforcement of Fort Sumter.--Perfidy of the Federal Government.-Excitement in Charleston.-Reduction of Fort Sumter by the Confederate Forces.-How the News was received in Washington.-Lincoln's Calculation.-His Proclamation of WAR.-The "Reaction" in the North.-Displays of Rancor towards the South.-Northern Democrats.-Replies of Southern Governors to Lincolu's Requisition for Troops.-Spirit of the South.-Secession of Virginia.—Maryland.--The Baltimore Riot.-l'atriotic Example of Missouri.— Lincoln's Proclamation blockading the Southern Ports.-General Leo.-The Federals evacuate Harper's Ferry.--Burning of the Navy Yard at Norfolk.-The Second Secessionary Movement.-Spirit of Patriotic Devotion in a South.--Supply of Arms in the South.-The Federal Government and the State of Maryland.-The Prospect.

THE circumstances of the advent of Mr. Lincoln to Washington were not calculated to inspire confidence in his courage or wisdom, or in the results of his administration. His party had busily prophesied, and sought to innoculate the North with the conviction, that his assumption of the Presidential office would be the signal of the restoration of peace; that by some mysterious ingenuity he would resolve the existing political complication, restore the Union, and inaugurate a season of unexampled peace, harmony, and prosperity. These weak and fulsome prophecies had a certain effect. In the midst of anxiety and embarrassment, in which no relief had yet been suggested, the inauguration of a new administration of the, government was looked to by many persons in the North, outside the Republican party, with a vague sense of hope, which was animated by reports, quite as uncertain, of the vigor, decision, and individuality of the new President. For months since the announcement of his election, Mr. Lincoln's lips had been closed. He had been studiously silent; expectations were raised by what was thought to be an indication of a mysterious wisdom; and the North impatiently waited for the hour when the oracle's lips were to be opened.

These vague expectations were almost ludicrously disappointed. On leaving his home, in Springfield, Illinois, for

Washington, Mr. Lincoln had at last opened his lips. In the speeches with which he entertained the crowd that at different points of the railroad watched his progress to the capital, he amused the whole country, even in the midst of a great public anxiety, with his ignorance, his vulgarity, his flippant conceit, and his Western phraseology. The North discovered that the new President, instead of having nursed a masterly wisdom in the retirement of his home at Springfield, and approaching the capital with dignity, had nothing better to offer to an agonized country than the ignorant conccits of a low Western politician, and the flimsy jests of a harlequin. His railroad speeches were characterized by a Southern paper as illustrating "the delightful combination of a Western county lawyer with a Yankee bar-keeper." In his harangues to the crowds which intercepted him in his journey, at a time when the country was la revolutionary chaos, when commerce and trade were prostrated, and when starving women and idle men were among the very audiences that listened to him, he declared to them in his peculiar phraseology that "nobody was hurt," that "all would come out right," and that there was "nothing going wrong." Nor was the rhetoric of the new President his only entertainment of the crowds that assembled to honor the progress of his journey to Washington. He amused them by the spectacle of kissing, on a public platform, a lady-admirer, who had sug gested to him the cultivation of his whiskers; he measured heights with every tall man he encountered in one of his public receptions, and declared that he was not to be "overtopped;" and he made public exhibitions of his wife-" the little woman," he called her-whose chubby figure, motherly face, and fondness for finery and colors recommended her to a very limited and very vulgar portion of the society of her sex.

These jests and indecencies of the demagogue who was to take control of what remained of the Government of the United States, belong to history. Whatever their disgrace, it was surpassed, however, by another display of character on the part of the coming statesman. While at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and intending to proceed from there to Baltimore, Mr. Lincoln was alarmed by a report, which was either silly or jocose, that a band of assassins were awaiting him in the latter city. Frightened beyond all considerations of dignity and decency,

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the new President of the United States left Harrisburg at night, on a different route than that through Baltimore; and in a motley disguise, composed of a Scotch cap and military cloak, stole to the capital of his government. The distinguished fugitive had left his wife and family to pursue the route on which it was threatened that the cars were to be thrown down a precipice by Secessionists, or, if that expedient failed, the work of assassination was to be accomplished in the streets of Baltimore. The city of Washington was taken by surprise by the irregular flight of the President to its shelter and protection. The representatives of his own party there received him with evident signs of disgust at the cowardice which had hur ried his arrival in Washington; but as an example of the carly prostitution of the press of that parasitical city to the incoming administration that was to feed its venal lusts, the escapade of Mr. Lincoln was, with a shamelessness almost incredible, exploited as an ingenious and brilliant feat, and entitled, in the newspaper extras that announced his arrival, as "another Fort Moultrie coup de main"--referring to the fraud by which the government had stolen a march by midnight to the supposed impregnable defences of Fort Sumter.

But Mr. Lincoln's fears for his personal safety evidently did not subside with his attainment of the refuges of Washington. A story was published seriously in a New York paper, that at the moment of his inauguration he was to be shot on the Capitol steps, by an air-gun, in the hands of a Sceessionist selected for this desperate and romantic task of assassination. The President, with nerves already shattered by his flight from Harrisburg, was easily put in a new condition of alarm. An armed guard was posted around Willard's hotel, where he had taken temporary quarters. Preparations were busily made to organize a military protection for the ceremony of the inaugu ration. The city of Washington had already been invested with large military forces, under the immediate command of General Scott, whose vanity and weak love of public sensations had easily induced him to pretend alarm, and to make a mili tary display, more on his own account than for the ridiculous and absurd object of Mr. Lincoln's personal security. For weeks the usually quiet city had been filled with Federal bayonets; the bugle's reveille, the roll of drums, and the tramp

of armed guards startled, in every direction, the civilian of Washington, who had been accustomed to nothing more war like than parades at the Navy Yard and rows in Congress: companies of flying artillery daily paraded the streets and thundered over its pavements; and no form of ostentation was omitted by the senile and conceited general in command, to give the Federal metropolis the appearance of a conquered city.

The hour of the inauguration-the morning of the fourth of March—at length arrived. Mr. Lincoln was dressed in a suit of black for the occasion, and, at the instance of his friends, had submitted to the offices of a hair-dresser. He entered the baronche that was to convey him to the Capitol, with a nervous agitation and an awkwardness, that were plainly evident to the crowd. IIis person attracted the curiosity of the mob. Of unusual height, the effect of his figure was almost ludicrous, from a swinging gait and the stoop of his shoulders; a cadav crous face, whose expression was that of a sort of funereal humor; long, swinging arms, with the general hirsute appearance of the Western countryman, made up the principal features of the new President.

The inauguration ceremony was attended by a most extraordinary military display, under the immediate direction of General Scott; who, to give it an appearance of propriety, and to increase its importance, affected the most uneasy alarms. Previous to inauguration day, the vaults of the Capitol were explored for evidences of a gunpowder plot to hurry. Mr. Lincoln and his satellites into eternity. In the procession along Pennsylvania Avenue, the President was hid from public view in a hollow square of cavalry, three or four deep. The tops of the houses along the route were occupied by soldiery watching for signs of tumult or assassination. Artillery and infantry companies were posted in different parts of the city; officers were continually passing to and fro; and as the procession approached the Capitol, Gen. Scott, who was in constant communication with all quarters of the city, was heard to exclaim, in a tone of relief, "every thing is going on peaceably; thank God Almighty for it." The expression of relief was simply ridiculous. The ceremony was disturbed by but a single incident: as the procession neared the portico of the Capitol, a

drunken man, who had climbed up one of the trees on the avenue, amused himself by striking with a staff the boughs of the tree and shouting to the crowd. The thought flashed upor the minds of the special police, that he might be the identical assassin with the air-gun; he was instantly seized by a dozen of them, and hurried from the scene of the ceremony with a rapidity and decision that for a moment alarmned, and then amused, the crowd. Mr. Lincoln delivered his inaugural from the East portico of the Capitol, to an audience huddled within the lines of the District militia, and with a row of bayonets glittering at his feet.

The inaugural was intended to be ambiguous; it proposed to cozen the South by a cheap sentimentalism, and, at the same time, to gratify the party that had elevated Mr. Lincoln, by a sufficient expression of the designs of the new administration. These designs were sufficiently apparent. Mr. Lincoln protested that he should take care that the laws of the United States were faithfully executed in all the States; he declared that in doing this, there was no necessity for bloodshed or violence, “unless it was forced upon the national authority." He promised that the power confided to him would be used to hold, occupy, and possess the forts and places belonging to the government, "but," continued the ambidexterous speaker, "beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among any people anywhere."

In the South, the inaugural was generally taken as a premonition of war. There were other manifestations of the spirit of the new administration. Violent Abolitionists and men whose hatred of the South was notorious and unrelenting, were placed in every department of the public service. William II. Seward was made Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; and Montgomery Blair, Postmastergeneral. Anson Burlingame was sent as representative to Austria; Cassius M. Clay, to Russia; Carl Shurz, to Spain; James E. Harvey, to Portugal; Charles F. Adains, to Eng land; and Joshua R. Giddings, to Canada. In the Senate, which was convened in an extra session to confirm executive appointments and to transact other public business, Charles Sumner was appointed Chairman of Foreign Relations; Wil