ally impressed the country, which awaited with impatience the opening of the oracle's lips.

Never was a disappointment so ludicrous. No sooner did. Mr. Lincoln leave his home on his official journey to Washington, than he became profuse of speech, entertaining the crowd, that at different points of the railroad watched his progress to the capital, with a peculiar style of stump oratory, in which his Western phraseology, jests, and comic displays amused the whole country in the midst of a great public anxiety. He was reported to have been for months nursing a masterly wisdom at Springfield; he was approaching the capital on an occasion and in circumstances the most imposing in American history; and yet he had no better counsels to offer to the distressed country than to recommend his hearers to "keep cool," and to assure them in his peculiar rhetoric and grammar that "nobody was hurt," and that there was "nothing going wrong." The new President brought with him the buffoonery and habits of a demagogue of the back-woods. He amused a crowd by calling up to the speaker's stand a woman, who had recommended him to grow whiskers on his face, and kissing her in public; he measured heights with the tall men he encountered in his public receptions; and, as part of the ceremony of the inauguration at Washington, he insisted upon kissing the thirty-four young women who, in striped colours and spangled dresses, represented in the procession the thirty-four States of the Union. These incidents are not improperly recorded: they are not trivial in connection with a historical name, and with reference to an occasion the most important in American annals.

At Philadelphia, where Mr. Lincoln was required to assist in raising a United States flag over Independence Hall, he was more serious in his speech than on any former occasion in his journey. In his address was this language: "that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave Liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that, in due time, the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men." These words were supposed to be aimed at the institution of negro slavery in the South. With reference to them a Baltimore newspaper said: "Mr. Lincoln, the President elect of the United States, will arrive in this city, with his suite, this afternoon by special train from Harrisburg, and will proceed, we learn, directly to Washington. It is to be hoped that no opportunity will be afforded him-or that, if it be afforded, he will not embrace it-to repeat in our midst the sentiments which he is reported to have expressed yesterday in Philadelphia." This newspaper paragraph and some other eircumstances equally trivial were made the occasion of an alarm that the new President was to be assassinated in Baltimore, or on his way to that city. The alarm was communicated to Mr. Lincoln himself. He was in

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bed at the time in Harrisburg. He at once determined to leave by a special train direct to Washington. Not satisfied with thus avoiding Baltimore, his alarm took the most unusual precautions. The telegraph wires were put beyond the reach of any one who might desire to use them. His departure was kept a profound secret. His person was disguised in a very ong military cloak; a Scotch plaid cap was put on his head; and thus curiously attired, the President of the United States made his advent to Washington. "Had he," said the Baltimore Sun, "entered Willard's Hotel with a 'head-spring' and a 'summersault' and the clown's merry greeting to Gen. Scott, 'Here we are,' the country could not have been more surprised at the exhibition." *

Mr. Lincoln's nervous alarm for his personal safety did not subside with his arrival in Washington. General Scott, who was in military command there, had already collected in the capital more than six hundred regular troops, and had called out the District militia, to resist an attempt which would be made by an armed force to prevent the inauguration of President Lincoln and to seize the public property. He insisted upon this imagination; he pretended violent alarm; he had evidently made up his mind for a military drama, and the display of himself on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. His vanity was foolish. A committee of the House of Representatives investigated the causes of alarm, heard the General himself, and decided that his apprehensions were unfounded. But he would not be quieted. He communicated his fears to Mr. Lincoln to such effect, that for some time before and after his inauguration soldiers were placed at his gate, and the grand reception-room of the White House was converted into quarters for troops from Kansas, who, under the command of the notorious Jim Lane, had volunteered to guard the chamber of the President.

Inauguration-day passed peacefully and quietly, but was attended by an extraordinary military display. Troops were stationed in different parts of the city; sentinels were posted on the tops of the highest houses and other eminences; the President moved to the Capitol in a hollow square of cavalry; and from the East portico delivered his inaugural address with a row of bayonets standing between him and his audience.

The address was such an attempt at ambidexterity as might be expected from an embarrassed and ill-educated man. It was a singular mixture. The new President said he was strongly in favour of the mainten

The silly or jocose story of the intended assassination was, that a party of Secessionists had plotted to throw the train of cars on which Mr. Lincoln was expected to travel to Baltimore, down a steep embankment, and this project failing, to murder him in the streets of Baltimore. But Mr. Lincoln left his wife and children to take the threatened route to Baltimore, and to risk the reported conspiracy to throw the cars from the track; and it turned out that they arrived safe at their jour ney's end, and without accident of any sort.

ance of the Union and was opposed to Secession; but he was equally against the principle of coercion, provided the rights of the United States government were not interfered with. He gave a quasi pledge not to appoint Federal officers for communities unanimously hostile to the authority of the Union; he appeared to proceed on the supposition that the South had only to be disabused of her impressions and apprehensions of Northern hostility; in one breath he exclaimed: "we are not enemies but friends;" in another he made the following significant declaration :

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

The address was variously received, according to the political opinions of the country, and made decided friends in no quarter. Mr. Lincoln's own party was displeased with it; and the Republican newspapers declared that its tone was deprecatory and even apologetic. The Northern Democrats had no violent disapproval to express. The Border Slave States, which yet remained in the Union, were undetermined as to its meaning, but regarded it with suspicion. In fact it was with reference to these that Mr. Lincoln was embarrassed, if he was not actually at this time balancing between peace and war. If coercion was attempted towards the seceded States, the Border Slave States would go out of the Union, and the country would be lost. If a pacific policy was adopted, the Chicago platform would go to pieces, and the Black Republican party would be broken into fragments.

There is reason to believe that for some weeks after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration there was a serious pause in his mind on the question of peace or war. His new Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, at the New England Dinner in New York, had confidently predicted a settlement of all the troubles" within sixty days"-a phrase, by the way, that was to be frequently repeated in the course of four long years. Mr. Horace Greeley testifies that on visiting Washington some two weeks or more after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, he was "surprised to see and hear on every hand what were to him convincing proofs that an early collision with the 'Confederates' was not seriously apprehended in the highest quarters." If there was really an interval of indecision in the first days of Mr. Lincoln's administration, it was rapidly overcome by partisan influences, for his apparent vacillation was producing disaffection in the Black Republican party, and the clamour of their disappointment was plainly heard in Washington.

In the seceded States the inaugural address had been interpreted as a menace of war. This interpretation was confirmed by other circumstances

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than the text of Mr. Lincoln's speech. In every department of the public service there had been placed by the new President violent abolitionists and men whose hatred of the South was notorious and unrelenting. The Pennsylvanian, a newspaper published in Philadelphia, said: "Mr. Lincoln stands to-day where he stood on the 6th of November last, on the Chicago Platform. He has not receded a single hair's breadth. He has appointed a Cabinet in which there is no slaveholder-a thing that has never before happened since the formation of the Government; and in which there are but two nominally Southern men, and both bitter Black Republicans of the radical dye. Let the Border States ignominiously submit to the Abolition rule of this Lincoln Administration, if they like; but don't let the miserable submissionists pretend to be deceived. Make any base or cowardly excuse but this."

But whatever may have been the just apprehensions of the Confederate Government at Montgomery, it exhibited no violent or tumultuous spirit, and made the most sedulous efforts to resist the consequence of war. There can be no doubt of the sincerity and zeal of its efforts to effect a peaceable secession, and to avoid a war which it officially deplored as policy detrimental to the civilized world."

As early as February, prior even to the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, the Confederate Congress had passed a resolution expressive of their desire for the appointment of commissioners to be sent to the Government of the United States, "for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith."

In pursuance of this resolution, and in furtherance of his own views, Mr. Davis deputed an embassy of commissioners to Washington, authorized to negotiate for the removal of the Federal garrisons from Forts Pickens and Sumter, and to provide for the settlement of all claims of public property arising out of the separation of the States from the Union. Two of the commissioners, Martin Crawford of Georgia, and John Forsythe of Alabama, attended in Washington, arriving there on the 5th of March. They gave only an informal notice of their arrival, with a view to afford time to the President, who had just been inaugurated, for the discharge of other pressing official duties in the organization of his adminis tration, before engaging his attention in the object of their mission. On the 12th of March, they addressed an official communication to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, explaining the functions of the embassy and its purposes.

Mr. Seward declined to make any official recognition of the commissioners, but very readily consented, for purposes which the sequel demon strated, to hold verbal conferences with them, through the friendly inter

mediation of Judge Campbell of Alabama. Through this gentleman, the commissioners, who had consented to waive all questions of form, received constant assurances from the Government of the United States of peaceful intentions, of the determination to evacuate Fort Sumter; and further that no measures, changing the existing status, prejudicially to the Confederate States, especially at Fort Pickens, were in contemplation; but that, in the event of any change of intention on the subject, notice would be given to the commissioners.

It was confidentially explained to the commissioners that to treat with them at that particular juncture might seriously embarrass the administration of Mr. Lincoln with popular opinion in the North; and they were recommended to patience and urged to confidence by assurances which keener diplomatists than these ill-chosen representatives of the Confederacy might have had reason to doubt.

But, at last, at the opportune time, this game with the commissioners was to be terminated. Dull and credulous as they were, their attention was, at last, attracted to the extraordinary preparations for an extensive military and naval expedition in New York, and other Northern ports. These preparations, commenced in secresy, for an expedition whose destination was concealed, only became known when nearly completed, and on the 5th, 6th, and 7th April transports and vessels of war, with troops, munitions, and military supplies, sailed from Northern ports bound southwards. Alarmed by so extraordinary a demonstration, the commissioners requested the delivery of an answer to their official communication of the 12th March, and thereupon received, on the 8th April, a reply dated on the 15th of the previous month, from which it appeared that during the whole interval, whilst the commissioners were receiving assurances calculated to inspire hope of the success of their mission, t! e Secretary of State and the President of the United States had already determined to hold no intercourse with them whatever; to refuse even to listen to any proposals they had to make, and had profited by the delay created by their own assurances, in order to prepare secretly the means for effective hostile operations.

Of this remarkable deception, and the disreputable method by which it had been obtained, President Davis justly and severely remarked, in a message to the Confederate Congress: "The crooked paths of diplomacy can scarcely furnish an example so wanting in courtesy, in candour, and directness, as was the course of the United States Government towards our commissioners in Washington."

While the Confederate commissioners were thus being hoodwinked and betrayed, the reinforcement of Sumter was the subject of constant Cabinet consultation at Washington, held in profound secresy from the public, and surrounded by an air of mystery that gave occasion for the most various