happy twinkle in his eye, 'you had better come up and shake my hand while you can; honours elevate some men, you know.' But he soon bethought him of a person who was of more importance to him than all this crowd. Looking towards his house, he said— 'Well, gentlemen, there is a little short woman at our house who is probably more interested in this despatch than I am; and, if you will excuse me, I will take it up and let her see it.""

The division caused by Douglas in the Democratic party to further his own personal ambition, utterly destroyed its power for a long time. The result was a division-one convention nominating Judge Douglas for the Presidency, with Mr. Johnson, of Georgia, as Vice-President; and the other, John Breckinridge, of Kentucky, with Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for the second office. Still another party, the Constitutional Union party, nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for President and Vice-President. Thus there were four rival armies in the political field, soon to be merged into two in real strife. On Nov. 6th, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, receiving 1,857,610 votes; Douglas had 1,291,574; Breckinridge, 850,082; Bell, 646,124. Of all the votes really cast, there was a majority of 930,170 against Lincoln-a fact which was afterwards continually urged by the Southern party, which called

him the Minority President. But when the electors who are chosen to elect the President met, they gave Lincoln 180 votes; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 30; while Douglas, who might, beyond question, have been the successful candidate had he been less crafty, received only 12. The strife between him and Lincoln had been like that between the giant and the hero in the Norse mythology, wherein the two gave to each other riddles, on the successful answers to which their lives depended. Judge Douglas strove to entrap Lincoln with a long series of questions which were easily eluded, but one was demanded of the questioner himself, and the answer he gave to it proved his destruction.

The immediate result of Lincoln's election was such a rush of hungry politicians seeking office as had never before been witnessed. As every appointment in the United States, from the smallest postoffice to a Secretaryship, is in the direct gift of the President, the newly-elected found himself attacked by thousands of place-hunters, ready to prove that they were the most deserving men in the world for reward; and if they did not, as "Artemus Ward" declares, come down the chimneys of the White House to interview him, they at least besieged him with such pertinacity, and made him so thoroughly wretched, that he is said to have at last replied to one man who insisted that it was really to his

exertions that the President owed his election"If that be so, I wonder you are not ashamed to look me in the face for getting me into such an abominable situation."

From his own good nature, and from a sincere desire to really deserve his popular name of Honest Old Abe, Lincoln determined to appoint the best men to office, irrespective of party. Hoping against hope to preserve the Union, he would have given place in his Cabinet to Southern Democrats as well as to Northern Republicans. But as soon as it was understood that he was elected, and that the country would have a President opposed to the extension of slavery, the South began to prepare to leave the Union, and for war. It was in vain that Lincoln and the great majority of his party made it clear as possible that, rather than see the country destroyed by war and by disunion, they would leave slavery as it was. This did not suit the views of the "rule-orruin" party of the South; and as secession from the Federal Union became a fixed fact, their entire press and all their politicians declared that their object was not merely to build up a Southern Confederacy, but to legislate so as to destroy the industry of the North, and break the old Union into a thousand conflicting independent governments. Therefore, Lincoln, in intending to offer seats in the Cabinet to Alexander H. Stephens, James Guthrie, of Kentucky, and John

Rumours of War.

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A. Gilmer, of North Carolina, made-if sincere-a great mistake, though one in every way creditable to his heart and his courtesy. The truth was, that the South had for four years unanimously determined to secede, and was actually seceding; while the North, which had gone beyond the extreme limits of endurance and of justice itself to conciliate the South, could not believe that fellow-countrymen and brothers seriously intended war. For it was predetermined and announced by the Southern press that, unless the Federal Government would make concessions beyond all reason, and put itself in the position of a disgraced and conquered state, there must be war.

As the terrible darkness began to gather, and the storm-signals to appear, Lincoln sought for temporary relief in visiting his stepmother and other old friends and relatives in Coles County. The meeting with her whom he had always regarded as his mother was very touching; it was the more affecting because she, to whom he was the dearest on earth, was under an impression, which time rendered prophetic, that he would, as President, be assassinated. This anticipation spread among his friends, who vied with one another in gloomy suggestions of many forms of murder-while one very zealous prophet, who had fixed on poison as the means by which Lincoln would die, urged him to take as a cook from home "one among his own female friends."

A Suspected Conspiracy-Lincoln's Departure for Washington-His Speeches at Springfield and on the road to the National CapitalBreaking out of the Rebellion-Treachery of President BuchananTreason in the Cabinet-Jefferson Davis's Message-Threats of Massacre and Ruin to the North-Southern Sympathisers-Lincoln's Inaugural Address-The Cabinet-The Days of Doubt and of Darkness.

T was unfortunate for Lincoln that he listened

IT

to the predictions of his alarmed friends. So generally did the idea prevail that an effort would be made to kill him on his way to Washington, that a few fellows of the lower class in Baltimore, headed by a barber named Ferrandina, thinking to gain a little notoriety-as they actually did get some money from Southern sympathisers-gave out that they intended to murder Mr. Lincoln on his journey to Washington. Immediately a number of detectives was set to work; and as everybody seemed to wish to find a plot, a plot was found, or imagined, and Lincoln was persuaded to pass privately and disguised on a special train from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Washington, where he arrived February 23rd, 1861. Before leaving Springfield, he addressed his friends at the moment of parting, at the railway station, in a speech of impressive simplicity.