the new President of the United States left Harrisburg at night, on a different route than that through Baltimore; and in a motley disguise, composed of a Scotch cap and military cloak stole to the capital of his government. The distinguished fugitive had left his wife and family to pursue the route on which it was threatened that the cars were to be thrown down a precipice by Secessionists, or, if that expedient failed, the work of assassination was to be accomplished in the streets of Baltimore. The city of Washington was taken by surprise by the irregular flight of the President to its shelter and protection. The representatives of his own party there received him with evident signs of disgust at the cowardice which had hurried his arrival in Washington; but as an example of the early prostitution of the press of that parasitical city to the incoming administration that was to feed its venal lusts, the escapade of Mr. Lincoln was, with a shamelessness almost incredible, exploited as an ingenious and brilliant feat, and entitled, in the newspaper extras that announced his arrival, as "another Fort Moultrie coup de main"-referring to the fraud by which the government had stolen a march by midnight to the supposed impregnable defences of Fort Sumter.

But Mr. Lincoln's fears for his personal safety evidently did not subside with his attainment of the refuges of Washington. A story was published seriously in a New York paper, that at the moment of his inauguration he was to be shot on the Capitol steps, by an air-gun, in the hands of a Secessionist selected for this desperate and romantic task of assassination. The President, with nerves already shattered by his flight from Harrisburg, was easily put in a new condition of alarm. An armed guard was posted around Willard's hotel, where he had taken temporary quarters. Preparations were busily made to organize a military protection for the ceremony of the inauguration. The city of Washington had already been invested with large military forces, under the immediate command of General Scott, whose vanity and weak love of public sensations had easily induced him to pretend alarm, and to make a military display, more on his own account than for the ridiculous and absurd object of Mr. Lincoln's personal security. For weeks the usually quiet city had been filled with Federal bayonets; the bugle's reveille, the roll of drums, and the tramp.

of armed guards startled, in every direction, the civilian of Washington, who had been accustomed to nothing more war like than parades at the Navy Yard and rows in Congress: companies of flying artillery daily paraded the streets and thundered over its pavements; and no form of ostentation was omitted by the senile and conceited general in command, to give the Federal metropolis the appearance of a conquered city.

The hour of the inauguration-the morning of the fourth of March-at length arrived. Mr. Lincoln was dressed in a suit of black for the occasion, and, at the instance of his friends, had submitted to the offices of a hair-dresser. He entered the barouche that was to convey him to the Capitol, with a nervous agitation and an awkwardness, that were plainly evident to the crowd. His person attracted the curiosity of the mob. Of unusual height, the effect of his figure was almost ludicrous, from a swinging gait and the stoop of his shoulders; a cadaverous face, whose expression was that of a sort of funereal humor; long, swinging arms, with the general hirsute appearance of the Western countryman, made up the principal features of the new President.

The inauguration ceremony was attended by a most extraordinary military display, under the immediate direction of General Scott; who, to give it an appearance of propriety, and to increase its importance, affected the most uneasy alarms. Previous to inauguration day, the vaults of the Capitol were explored for evidences of a gunpowder plot to hurry Mr. Lincoln and his satellites into eternity. In the procession along Pennsylvania Avenue, the President was hid from public view in a hollow square of cavalry, three or four deep. The tops of the houses along the route were occupied by soldiery watching for signs of tumult or assassination. Artillery and infantry companies were posted in different parts of the city; officers were continually passing to and tro; and as the procession ap proached the Capitol, Gen. Scott, who was in constant communication with all quarters of the city, was heard to exclaim, in a tone of relief, "every thing is going on peaceably; thank God Almighty for it." The expression of relief was simply ridiculous. The ceremony was disturbed by but a single incident: as the procession neared the portico of the Capitol, a

drunken man, who had climbed up one of the trees on the avenue, amused himself by striking with a staff the boughs of the tree and shouting to the crowd. The thought flashed upon the minds of the special police, that he might be the identical assassin with the air-gun; he was instantly seized by a dozen of them, and hurried from the scene of the ceremony with a rapidity and decision that for a moment alarmed, and then amused, the crowd. Mr. Lincoln delivered his inaugural from the East portico of the Capitol, to an audience huddled within the lines of the District militia, and with a row of bayonets glittering at his feet.

The inaugural was intended to be ambiguous; it proposed to cozen the South by a cheap sentimentalism, and, at the same time, to gratify the party that had elevated Mr. Lincoln, by a sufficient expression of the designs of the new administration. These designs were sufficiently apparent. Mr. Lincoln protested that he should take care that the laws of the United States were faithfully executed in all the States; he declared that in doing this, there was no necessity for bloodshed or violence, "unless it was forced upon the national authority." He promised that the power confided to him would be used to hold, occupy, and possess the forts and places belonging to the government, "but," continued the ambidexterous speaker, "beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among any people anywhere."

In the South, the inaugural was generally taken as a premonition of war. There were other manifestations of the spirit of the new administration. Violent Abolitionists and men whose hatred of the South was notorious and unrelenting, were placed in every department of the public service. William H. Seward was made Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; and Montgomery Blair, Postmastergeneral. Anson Burlingame was sent as representative to Austria; Cassins M. Clay, to Russia; Carl Shurz, to Spain; James E. Harvey, to Portugal; Charles F. Adams, to Eng land; and Joshua R. Giddings, to Canada. In the Senate, which was convened in an extra session to confirm executive appointments and to transact other public business, Charles Sunner was appointed Chairman of Foreign Relations; Wil

liam P. Fessenden, of Finance; and Henry Wilson, of Mitary Affairs. A portion of the time of this extra session vag consumed in discussing the policy of the administration. Mr. Douglas, who had represented the Northern Democracy in the Presidential contest, and still claimed to represent it, and who had already courted the new administration of his rival-had held Mr. Lincoln's hat at the inauguration ceremony, and enacted the part of Mrs. Lincoln's cavalier at the inauguration ball-essayed to give to the President's inaugural a peace interpretation, and to soften what had been foreshadowed of his policy. The efforts of the demagogue were ill-timed and paltry. Senators from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and North Carolina, who still continued in the councils of the government, remained long enough to witness the subversion of all the principles that had before contributed to the prosperity and stability of the American Government; to learn, as far as possible, the course the government would pursue towards the Confederate States; and to return home to prepare their people for the policy of discord, conflict, and civil war which had been inaugurated.

The financial condition of the government at the time of Mr. Lincoln's accession was by no means desperate. There was a balance in the Treasury of six millions, applicable to current expenses; the receipts from customs were estimated at eighty thousand dollars per day; and it was thought that a loan would not be called for for some time, should there be a happy continuation of peace.

The Confederate States government at Montgomery had shown nothing of a desperate or tumultuous spirit; it had not watched events with recklessness as to their conclusion; it was anxious for peace; and it gave a rare evidence of the virtue and conservatism of a new government, which was historically the fruit of a revolution, by the most sedulous efforts to avoid all temptations to violence, and to resist the consequence of Soon after the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, it had 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

war.

Crawford, of Georgia, and John Forsythe, of Alabama, at tended in Washington, and addressed a communication to Mr. Seward, which explained the functions of the embassy and its purposes.

Mr. Seward declined for the present to return an official answer to the commissioners, or to recognize in an official light their humane and amicable mission. His government had resolved on a policy of perfidy. The commissioners were amused from week to week with verbal assurances that the government was disposed to recognize them; that to treat with them at the particular juncture might seriously embarrass the administration of Mr. Lincoln; that they should be patient and confident; and that in the mean time the military status of the United States in the South would not be disturbed. Judge Campbell, of the Supreme Court, had consented to be the intermediary of these verbal conferences. When the sequel of the perfidy of the administration was demonstrated, he wrote two notes to Mr. Seward, distinctly charging him with overreaching and equivocation, to which Mr. Seward never attempted a defence or a reply.

The dalliance with the commissioners was not the only de ceitful indication of peace. It was given out and confidently reported in the newspapers, that Fort Sumter was to be evacuated by the Federal forces. The delusion was continued for weeks. The Black Republican party, of course, resented this reported policy of the government; but a number of their newspapers endeavored to compose the resentment by the arguments that the evacuation would be ordered solely on the ground of military necessity, as it would be impossible to reinforce the garrison without a very extensive demonstration of force, which the government was not then prepared to make; that the purposes of the administration had not relaxed, and that the evacuation of Sumter was, as one of the organs of the administration expressed it, but "the crouch of the tiger before he leaped."

It was true that the condition of the garrison of Fort Sumter had been a subject of Cabinet consultation; but it was after wards discovered that all that had been decided by the advisers of the President, among whom General Scott had been admitted, was that military reinforcement of the fort was, under the