the gulf was too wide to be bridged and too deep to be filled up, and the humane desires which led to it suffered their foredoomed disappointment.

The Northern people understood the matter perfectly, with remarkably few exceptions, and there was never an opportunity for the Southern people, generally, to know why the awful bloodshed of the next few weeks was uselessly insisted upon by their obstinate rulers. Peace was not at all denied or withheld from them, and there was no attainable object for which so many of them should suffer or die. The United States, through its President, did but continue its steady denial of the existence as a nation, and of the treaty-making independence, of the Confederacy.

For one month more the war went bitterly on, from day to day. The end of Mr. Lincoln's first term of office, with the beginning of a second term, arrived at 12 o'clock, noon, of the 4th of March, 1865. The term of Congress also expired, and the session with it; but the President convened the Senate, at once, for an "extra session," by proclamation. For a second time Mr. Lincoln took the oath of office as President of the United States. It was a grand and solemn occasion, full of strong and striking contrasts with the same ceremonial, in the same place, four years before.

The crowd which assembled was even larger, this time; but it was a different crowd, with changed hearts and with better and higher hopes. The multitude was not the same. The Man was the same and yet he was not, for behind him as behind them was the fire of the sevenfold furnace through which God had led him. No smell of burning was upon his garments of integrity and faith, but his fetters had been largely burned away. He was almost ready to walk out of the furnace and stand before the King. The oath of office was administered by ChiefJustice Chase; the President looked out for a moment, silently, over the multitude, and then he addressed them, and all other men, as follows:

"Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take the

occasion for an exThen, a statement

oath of the Presidential office, there is less tended address than there was at the first. somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

"The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

"On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish: and the war came.

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, extend, and perpetuate this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated

that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe unto that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offenses, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are just and righteous altogether.'

--

"With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

The inaugural address made a deep impression upon the nation. Nothing at all resembling it had ever been heard before.

A ruler, publicly receiving the trust of four years more of power, felt called upon to set before the people the result of his profound study and analysis of the Divine Providence, as presented in the Scriptures, and to call upon them to join him in acknowledging the wisdom and justice of God. He also, having many times already called upon them to pray with him, deemed it well to refer to the nature of both prayer and its answers. As for his policy as a ruler, he was able, in talking to such a people, to sum it all up in a condensed paraphrase of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

It was not exactly a "state paper," and there was in it a strangely solemn and mournful undertone, not so much heard as felt. It was a Farewell Address of a man whose work was nearly done and who, somehow, was dimly aware of that fact.

Abraham Lincoln's work was indeed done, for all that even then remained was for the hands of others. He had only a few short weeks to wait before turning over all his power and responsibility and toil to those who were to follow. At the same time his education was completed, so far as it could be in this present world. His mind and soul had reached their full development, in a religious life so unconsciously intense and absorbing that it could not otherwise than utter itself in the grand sentences of his last address to the people. The knowledge had come, and the faith had come, and the charity had come; and with all had come the love of God, which put away all thought of rebellious resistance to the will of God, leading as in his earlier days of trial to despair and insanity.

CHAPTER LV.

AT LAST.

A Proclamation of Pardon-Going to the Army-The Death Struggle of the Rebellion-Hemmed in by the Hunters-The President in Richmond-Surrenders of Lee and Johnson-Cessation of the Civil War.

MR. FESSENDEN retired from the Treasury Department, on account of ill-health, on the 6th of March, and Hugh McCulloch, of Indiana, was appointed in his stead; but no other changes were made in the Cabinet. The machinery of the government was all in good order and worked right on, without a pause or a break. There was no occasion for the presence of anxious crowds of office-seekers, as in 1861. This was not in any wise a new Administration. Nevertheless, for a fortnight, there was an increase in the rush and pressure of official duties. In pursuance of an Act of Congress, a proclamation was issued, on the 11th of March, offering pardon to all deserters who should at once return to their posts. A draft for three hundred thousand men more began on the 15th, as if in preparation for possible needs of the army. All matters were settled and adjusted, and then the President, for the first time, indulged himself in what bore a weird and somber likeness to a vacation. On the 22d of the month he went down the Potomac to City Point, to be with the army during the closing struggles of the war. He was very weary, in heart and brain, and he could there escape from many of his daily and hourly tormentors. Not even the very good people who only desired to see him and shake hands with him could all follow him to City Point.

General Sherman's army reached Goldsborough, North Carolina, on the 22d, and the General left it there and came up to consult as to further operations.