being yourselves the
aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the
Government; while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve,
protect, and defend" it.

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our
bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from
every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of
the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the
better angels of our nature.

At the close of the address, which was delivered with the utmost
earnestness and solemnity, Lincoln, "with reverent look and impressive
emphasis, repeated the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of his country. Douglas, who knew the conspirators and
their plots, with patriotic magnanimity then grasped the hand of the
President, gracefully extended his congratulations, and the assurance
that in the dark future he would stand by him, and give to him his
utmost aid in upholding the Constitution and enforcing the laws of his
country."

"At the inauguration," says Congressman Riddle, "I stood within a yard
of Mr. Lincoln when he pronounced his famous address. How full of life
and power it then was, with the unction of his utterance! Surely, we
thought, the South, which rejected the concessions of Congress, would
accept him. How dry and quaint, yet ingenious, much of that inaugural
appears to me now, when the life and soul seem to have gone out of it! A
sad thing--a spectre of the day--will forever haunt my memory: Poor old
President Buchanan, short, stout, pale, white-haired, yet bearing
himself resolutely throughout, linked by the arm to the new President,
into whom from himself was passing the qualifying unction of the
Constitution, jostled hither and thither, as already out of men's sight,
yet bravely maintaining the shadow of dignity and place. How glad he
must have been to take leave of his successor at the White House when
all was ended!"

The formalities of the inauguration concluded, Lincoln passed back
through the Senate Chamber, and, again escorted by Mr. Buchanan, was
conducted to the White House, where the cares and anxieties of his
position immediately descended upon him. "Strange indeed," says General
Logan, "must have been the thoughts that crowded thr