h; Georgia on the
19th; Louisiana on the 25th; and Texas on the 1st day of February. The
plans of the seceders went on, unmolested by the Buchanan
administration. Southerners in the Cabinet and in Congress conspired to
deplete the resources of the Government, leaving it helpless to contest
the assumptions of the revolted States. The treasury was deliberately
bankrupted; the ships of the navy were banished to distant ports; the
Northern arsenals were rifled to furnish arms for the seceded States;
the United States forts and armaments on the Southern coast were
delivered into the hands of the enemy, with the exception of Fort
Sumter, which was gallantly held by Major Robert Anderson. While this
system of bold and unscrupulous treachery was carried on by men in the
highest places of trust, the chief executive of the nation remained a
passive spectator. The South was in open rebellion, and the North was
powerless to interfere. The weeks prior to the inauguration of the new
administration dragged slowly along, each day adding fresh cause for
anxiety and alarm.

Amidst these portentous scenes Lincoln, watching them from a distance,
maintained his calm and vigilant attitude. No one knew better than he
the significance of these ominous events that were taking place at the
nation's capital and in the disaffected States; but there was nothing he
could do about them. His time for action had not yet come. He said
little, but enough to show unmistakably what he thought of the situation
and what course he had resolved upon to meet it. As early as December
17, 1860--a little more than a month after his election--in writing to
Thurlow Weed, he said: "_My opinion is that no State can in any way get
out of the Union without the consent of the other States_; and that _it
is the duty of the President to run the machine as it is_." He had been
made the pilot of the ship of State, and his duty and purpose were to
save the vessel.[B] Upon this mighty task were concentrated all the
powers of his intellect and will; and through all the desperate voyage
that followed he never wavered or faltered in his course, from the time
of his supreme resolve, made in the quiet of his country home, to the
hour when

"From fearful trip the victor ship came in with object won"--

but with her more than heroic but now victorious Captain "fallen cold
and dead" upon her deck.

As the winter wore away, and the time for Lincoln's inauguration as
President