have been assassinated, had I gone through Baltimore as
first contemplated; but I thought it wise to run no risk, where no risk
was necessary."

The reflection can hardly fail to occur, how grossly unfair it was that
Mr. Lincoln should be put into the position in which he was put at this
time, and then that fault should be found with him even if his prudence
was overstrained. Many millions of people in the country hated him with
a hatred unutterable; among them might well be many fanatics, to whom
assassination would seem a noble act, many desperadoes who would regard
it as a pleasing excitement; and he was to go through a city which men
of this stamp could at any time dominate. The custom of the country
compelled this man, whom it had long since selected as its ruler, to
make a journey of extreme danger without any species of protection
whatsoever. So far as peril went, no other individual in the United
States had ever, presumably, been in a peril like that which beset him;
so far as safeguards went, he had no more than any other traveler. A few
friends volunteered to make the journey with him, but they were useless
as guardians; and he and they were so hustled and jammed in the railway
stations that one of them actually had his arm broken. This
extraordinary spectacle may have indicated folly on the part of the
nation which permitted it, but certainly it did not involve the disgrace
of the individual who had no choice about it. The people put Mr. Lincoln
in a position in which he was subjected to the most appalling, as it is
the most vague, of all dangers, and then left him to take care of
himself as best he could. It was ungenerous afterward to criticise him
for exercising prudence in the performance of that duty which he ought
never to have been called upon to perform at all.[126]

Immediately after his arrival in Washington Mr. Lincoln received a
visit from the members of the Peace Congress. Grotesque and ridiculous
descriptions of him, as if he had been a Caliban in education, manners,
and aspect, had been rife among Southerners, and the story goes that the
Southern delegates expected to be at once amused and shocked by the
sight of a clodhopper whose conversation would be redolent of the
barnyard, not to say of the pigsty. Those of them who had any skill in
reading character were surprised,--as the tradition is,--discomfited,
even a little alarmed, at what in fact they beheld; for Mr. Lincoln
appeared before th