for an extended address than there was at first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and place 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 hopes 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 located 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, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to 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, 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 dare to 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 should not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, 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 offence came, shall we discern there is 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 speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman'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 by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

"With malice towards 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 wound; 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."

We see the spirit which breathes in this inaugural, and we cannot but love the memory of the man who wrote it.

"The most unsparing criticism, denunciation, and ridicule never moved him to a single bitter expression, never seemed to awaken in him a single bitter thought. The most exultant hour of party victory brought no exultation to him. He accepted power, not as an honor, but as a responsibility; and when, after a severe struggle, that power came a second time into his hands, there was something preternatural in the calmness of his acceptance of it. The first impulse seemed to be a disclaimer of all triumph over the party that had strained their utmost to push him from his seat, and then a sober girdingup of his loins to go on with the work to which he was appointed.

"The last inaugural was characterized by a tone so peculiarly solemn, and free from earthly passion, that it seems to us now, who look back on it in the light of what followed, as if his soul had already parted from earthly things, and felt the powers of the world to come. It was not the formal State-paper of the chief of a party in an hour of victory, so much as the solemn soliloquy of a great soul reviewing its course under a vast responsibility, and appealing from all earthly judgments to the tribunal of Infinite Justice. It was the solemn clearing of his soul for the great sacrament of death; and the

words that he quoted in it with such thrilling power were those of the adoring spirits that veil their faces before the throne: 'Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.' ”*

The course pursued by the President is indorsed by the people in the act of continuing him in the office which he had so faithfully filled. This was the laurel wreath with which they crowned him as a conqueror, little dreaming that the angels were already preparing a garland of immortelles for the brow of the people's President, whose brightness and beauty would remain undimmed forever.

* Mrs. Stowe, in "Atlantic Monthly," August, 1865.

CHAPTER XII.

LAST DAYS AND A NATION'S GRIEF.

"This Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off."

SHAKSPEARE'S Macbeth.

"Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets."

ECCLES. xii. 5.

THE hour of triumph arrives. Victory no longer hovers between the contending forces, but settles down upon the standard of freedom. Grant and Sherman and Sheridan have done their work bravely; and they and their fellow-warriors, officers and privates, have won immortal honor; for "Richmond is ours!" Lee retreats! Grant pursues! The Confederate President is a flying fugitive; and he whom God called to be the savior of a race is to tread the streets of the conquered city, - the Babylon that had fallen!

"Carleton"* narrates in his own graphic style the visit of the President to Richmond, calling it "one of the memorable events of the week." He says, "There was no committee of reception, no guard of honor, no grand display of troops, no assembling of an eager multitude to welcome him. He entered the city unheralded. Six sailors, armed with carabines, stepped upon the shore, followed by the President, who held his little son by the hand; and Admiral Porter: the officers followed, and six more sailors brought up the rear.”

* C. C. Coffin, Esq., in "Atlantic Monthly " for June, 1865.