very different from what was anticipated by the great body of the people is unquestionably true. Few men of any party then understood the secret influences that were conspiring against the peace and integrity of the Union, and fewer still were willing to believe any considerable portion of the people capable of so gigantic a crime as the attempted overthrow of the great Republic of the world, either to revenge a party defeat or to perpetuate the slavery of the negro race. No man can justly be held responsible even for the consequences of his own action, any farther than, in the exercise of a just and fair judgment, he can foresee them. In electing Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, the American people intended to erect a permanent bulwark against the territorial extension of slavery, and the perpetuation of its political power. If they had foreseen the madness of its defenders, they might have shrunk from the dreadful ordeal through which that madness has compelled the nation to pass, but in this, as in all the affairs of human life, ignorance of the future often proves the basis and guarantee of its wise development: and we believe that even now, with their experience, through three of the stormiest and most terrible years this nation has ever seen, of the sagacity, integrity, and unswerving patriotism with which President Lincoln has performed the duties of his high office, and with their clearer perception of the ultimate issue of that great contest between freedom and slavery, which the progress of events had rendered inevitable, the people look back with entire satisfaction upon the vote which, in 1860, made Mr. Lincoln President of the United States. PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S ADMINISTRATION. CHAPTER I. FROM THE ELECTION, NOV. 6, 1860, TO THE INAUGURATION, MARCH 4, 1861. ABRAHAM LINCOLN was elected to be President of the United States on the sixth day of November 1860. The preliminary canvass had not been marked by any very extraordinary features. Party lines were a good deal broken up, and four presidential candidates were in the field; but this departure from the ordinary course of party contests had occurred more than once in the previous political history of the country. Mr. LINCOLN was put in nomination by the Republican party, and represented in his life and opinions the precise aim and object for which that party had been formed. He was a native of a slaveholding State; and while he had been opposed to slavery, he had regarded it as a local institution, the creature of local laws, with which the national government of the United States had nothing whatever to do. But in common with all observant public men, he had watched, with distrust and apprehension, the advance of slavery as an element of political power towards ascendency in the government of the nation, and had cordially co-operated with those who thought it absolutely necessary for the future well-being of the country that this tendency should, be checked. He had, therefore, opposed very strenuously the extension of slavery. into the territories, and had asserted the right and the duty of Congress to exclude it by positive legislation therefrom. The Chicago Convention, which nominated Mr. LINCOLN, adopted a platform of which this was the cardinal feature; but it also took good care to repel the imputation of its political opponents, and to remove the apprehensions of the South, that the party proposed to interfere with slavery in the States whose laws gave it support and protection. It expressly disavowed all authority and all wish for such interference, and declared its purpose to protect the Southern States in the free enjoyment of all their constitutional rights. The Democratic Convention, originally assembled at Charleston, was disposed to make Mr. DOUGLAS its candidate in opposition to Mr. LINCOLN; but this purpose was thwarted by leading politicians of the slaveholding States, who procured the nomination of Mr. BRECKINRIDGE, with full knowledge of the fact that this. would divide the Democratic party, and in all probability secure the election of Mr. LINCOLN. Mr. BRECKINRIDGE represented the pro-slavery element of the Democratic party, and asserted the duty of the national government, by a positive exercise of its legislative and executive power, to protect slavery in the territories, against any legislation either of Congress or of the people of the territories themselves, which should seek to impair in any degree the right, alleged to be recognized in the Constitution, of property in slaves. Mr. DOUGLAS supported the theory that the people of the territories, acting through their territorial legislature, had the same right to decide this question for themselves as they had to decide any other; and he represented this principle in opposition to Mr. LINCOLN on the one hand, and Mr. BRECKINRIDGE on the other, in the Presidential canvass. JOHN BELL, of Tennessee, was also made a candidate by the action mainly of men who were dissatisfied with all the existing political parties, and who were alarmed at the probable results of a |