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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 long 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 a 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 nó 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, the 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

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rumours. Gen. Scott had advised the President that, in his military judgment, it had become impracticable to reinforce Fort Sumter, on account of the number of batteries erected by the Confederates at the mouth of the harbour; that an entrance from the sea was impossible. But Mr. Lincoln, and especially one member of his Cabinet, Mr. Blair, were firm in their refusal to evacuate the fort. It now became the concern of the government to avoid the difficulty of military reinforcements by some artifice that would equally well answer its purposes. That artifice was the subject of secret and sedulous consultation, that extended through several weeks.

About the last of March, Capt. Fox, of the Federal Navy, was sent to Charleston by the government, and stated that his object was entirely pacific. He was, by a strange credulity, allowed to visit the fort and to communicate with Major Anderson. His real object was to carry concealed despatches to Major Anderson, and to collect information with reference to a plan for the reinforcement of the garrison. On his return to Washington he was called frequently before President Lincoln and his Cabinet to explain his plan for reinforcing the fort, and to answer the objections presented by Gen. Scott and the military authorities. The project involved passing batteries with steamers or boats at night at right angles to the Confederate line of fire, and thirteen hundred yards distant -a feat which Capt. Fox argued was entirely practicable, and that many safe examples of it had been furnished by the Crimean War.

In this conflict of counsels the Washington administration hesitated. Mr. Lincoln, at one time, although with bitter reluctance, agreed that the fort should be evacuated, if the responsibility of the act could be thrown on the preceding administration of Mr. Buchanan. A leading article for a New York paper had been prepared, the proof-sheet of which was submitted to Mr. Lincoln and approved. In this, the ground was taken that the evacuation was an absolute military necessity, brought about by treason on the part of Mr. Buchanan, who, it was insisted, might have reinforced and supplied the garrison, but not only failed to do so, but purposely left it in such condition as to force his successor in office to encounter the ignominy of yielding it up to the Southerners. This same article lauded Mr. Lincoln's pacific policy, saying: "Had war-not peace -been his object,—had he desired to raise throughout the mighty North a feeling of indignation which in ninety days would have emancipated every slave on the continent, and driven their masters into the sea-if need be, he had only to have said-" Let the garrison of Fort Sumter do their duty, and perish beneath its walls: and on the heads of the traitours and rebels and slavery propagandists be the consequences."

And yet the horrible alternative depicted here and indicated as the means of rousing the North to a war of extermination upon slavery and