order of procession to the platform on the east of the Capitol; and the line was formed, the Marshal of the District of Columbia leading. Then followed Chief Justice Taney and the Judges of the Supreme Court, the Sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, the Committee of Arrange. ments of the Senate, the President of the United States and the President-elect, Vice-President of the United States, and Senate, the members of the diplomatic of the House of Representatives. In this order the corps, governors of State and Territories, and members procession marched to the platform erected in the usual

position

Over the main steps on the east front of the

Capitol, where a temporary covering had been placed to protect the President-elect from possible rain during the reading of his inaugural address. The greater part of an hour was occupied in seating the procession on the platform, and in the delivery of the address of Mr. Lincoln, which he read with a clear, loud, and distinct voice, quite intelligible to at least ten thousand persons below

him.

oath of office from the venerable Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.* pleted, the President and Ex-President retired by the "After the ceremony of inauguration had been com

At the close of the address, Mr. Lincoln took the

same

avenue, and the procession, or the military part of

1

it, marched to the executive mansion. On arriving at the President's house, Mr. Lincoln met Gen. Scott, by whom he was warmly greeted; and then the doors of the passed through, shaking hands with the President, who simple and quiet manner was a change of rulers made." +

house

stood

were opened, and thousands of persons rapidly

in the reception-room for that purpose. In this

Chief Justice Taney administered this oath to ten successive presidents.
Annual Cyclopædia," 1861.

And thus the lowly-born son of the Western pioneer sat down in the presidential chair of a great Republic,- a seat more honorable than any throne on earth. The contrast between his humble home in early life and this

high position is seen in the sketch thus purposely given of the imposing ceremonies of inauguration. Well might the eloquent statesman* add, after mentioning Cæsar, William of Orange, and Henry IV. of France, all of whom were assassinated, "his star will not pale by the side of theirs. . . . These are illustrious names; but there is nothing in them which can eclipse the simple life of our President, whose example will be an epoch in the history of humanity, and a rebuke to every usurper, to be commemorated forever by history and by song. 'I called thee from the sheep-cot to be ruler over Israel,' said the Lord to David; and whoever is thus called is more than Cæsar. Such an appointment was his; and his simple devotion to human rights was more than genius or power."

* Hon. Charles Sumner.

CHAPTER V.

TROUBLOUS TIMES.

"We wait beneath the furnace-blast
The pangs of transformation:
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mould anew the nation.

Hot burns the fire

Where wrongs expire;

Nor spares the hand

That from the land

Uproots the ancient evil."

WHITTIER.

"I am for peace; but, when I speak, they are for war."- Ps. cxx. 7. THE "Quaker drop" showed itself in the inaugural address of the new President. The blood of a pious and peaceful ancestry coursed along the veins of him whom God had called to be the head of a great nation in its most troublous times: with a prescience belonging to that inheritance, he saw the gathering cloud, and heard the

thunders of war.

Yet he would fain stay the glittering

bolt of destiny, and, if possible, forbid the clashing of

contending steel.

Hence the deprecatory tone of his

first inaugural; the evident desire for peace, that shone, like the golden symbol of the descending Spirit, in the illuminated missals of other days. But it was unavailing. The soft utterances of peace were drowned in the noisy clamors of war; and the closing paragraph of that inaugural address was, even more than its author knew, the very voice of prophecy. Only a few short months, and "the mystic cords of memory" did stretch from many a "battle-field and patriot grave" to living hearts and

hearth-stones all over our broad land; and at the close of the mighty conflict, from his own grave-the grave of a martyr was to come a voice pleading with humanity for liberty and righteousness. But we will not anticipate.

Mr. Lincoln's first act was to choose a Cabinet. This he did with his usual discrimination; and though the lapse of time and changing course of events led to changes in the Cabinet, yet none are willing to impeach the wisdom which selected the first set of Cabinet-officers. For the important position of Secretary of State, William H. Seward of New York was selected; Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was placed in charge of the Treasury Department; Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania became Secretary of War; Gideon Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B. Smith of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair of Maryland was appointed Postmaster-General; and Edward Bates of Missouri, Attorney-General.

As every reader of to-day knows, the Southern States manifested a rebellious spirit long before Lincoln filled the chair of Washington. Had the imbecile Buchanan but possessed the old Roman spirit of one of his predecessors, he would have shown that he had a "backbone," and taken a Jacksonian share of the "responsibility" in using measures that would have crushed the viper in the egg. But the pusillanimous policy adopted just suited the "let-me-alone" theory of the Southern secessionists; and so the infamous Floyd could steal our arms, and the double-dyed traitor, Robert E. Lee, could linger in our ranks till he had possessed himself of Gen. Scott's plans, and then desert to the enemy, thenceforth to use his knowledge in an effort to overthrow the best Government the world ever saw, and place a man, who dis

graced the name of a former President of our Republic, on a throne, the corner-stone of whose tottering pedestal was human slavery. And thus Buchanan made the way rough and hard for Lincoln. But the hour and the man were ready for each other. The President went calmly forward. "Coming to the presidency pre-occupied by the traditional theories and opinions of the political school in which he was educated, he devoted himself with a purpose single and exclusive to the practical interpretation of events, to the study of those lessons taught by the experience through which the country was called to pass; and learning, in common with a majority of his countrymen, in the strifes and agonies of the Rebellion, by the lurid glare of the fires of treason and of civil war, how to accommodate opinion to the altered relations of States, interests, and sections of the people, he marched, side by side with the advancing hosts of the best and most discerning, in the direction where Divine Providence pointed the way.'

Yet he could not conscientiously counsel war at first. His inaugural was an olive-branch vainly held out to hands that would not receive it. Then came a pause after its utterance. It was the lull before the storm; the portentous calm that precedes the burst of the tornado. "Since the close of the Revolutionary struggle, no man had seen in the free States any other banner floating over a regiment of our people than the stars and stripes: though the waves of party-spirit had often run mountain-high, and we had seemed just on the brink of disruption and civil war, yet the dreaded collision had always been somehow averted, and the moment of fiercest excitement, of wildest alienation, had often been the im

*Gov. Andrew's Address.