needed a new and stronger government when
hostilities should actually break out.

On the 4th of March, 1861, the inauguration of Lincoln took place, and
well do I remember the ceremony. The day was warm and beautiful, and
nature smiled in mockery of the bloody tragedy which was so soon to
follow. I mingled with the crowd at the eastern portico of the Capitol,
and was so fortunate as to hear and see all that took place,--the high
officials who surrounded the President, his own sad and pensive face,
his awkward but not undignified person arrayed in a faultless suit of
black, the long address he made, the oath of office administered by
Chief Justice Taney, and the dispersion of the civil and military
functionaries to their homes. It was not a great pageant, but was an
impressive gathering. Society, in which the Southern element
predominated, sneered at the tall ruler who had learned so few of its
graces and insincerities, and took but little note of the thunder-clouds
in the political atmosphere,--the distant rumblings which heralded the
approaching storm so soon to break with satanic force.

The inaugural address was not only an earnest appeal for peace, but a
calm and steadfast announcement of the law-abiding policy of the
government, and a putting of the responsibility for any bloodshed upon
those who should resist the law. Two brief paragraphs contain
the whole:--

"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the
duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects
there will be no invasion, no use of force among the people anywhere.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."

This was the original chart of the course which the President followed,
and his final justification when by use of "the power confided to him"
he had accomplished the complete restoration of the authority of the
Federal Union over all the vast territory which the seceded States had
seized and so desperately tried to control.

Lincoln was judicious and fortunate in his cabinet. Seward, the ablest
and most experienced statesman of the day, accepted the office of
Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, who had been governor of Ohio, and
United States Senator, was made Secreta