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cipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulties.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you.

You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend " it.

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Both to the large assemblage that listened to the distinct recital of this address, in tones which made every word audible to the throng, and to loyal men everywhere, as it was brought to them a few minutes or hours later, by the aid of telegraph and printing press, it was a welcome message. The people saw in it an assurance that imbecility, double-dealing, or treachery, no longer had sway in the nation; that the new President was determined to carry out the behests of the people in maintaining the National integrity; and that, while thus faithfully observing his official oath, he would use every lawful and rational means to avert the convulsions of domestic war. He distinctly suggested the holding of a National Constitutional Convention, which would have power to adjust all the questions properly at issue, even including peaceable separation in a lawful manner, by a change of the organic law. He demonstrated unanswerably the utter causelessness of war, and distinctly assured the conspirators that if hostilities were commenced, it must be by them, and not by the Government. He laid down a line of policy which, had it been met in a corresponding spirit on the other side, would inevitably have averted disastrous years of bloodshed and all their consequences. While thus announcing his views, and

reaffirming sentiments formerly uttered by himself, as well as those of the political convention which nominated him for the Presidency, he also plainly indicated that the benefits secured by the Constitution to any portion of the people could not be claimed by them while trampling that instrument under foot. He told them plainly that the course he thus marked out was not one to be pursued toward rebels who should plunge the nation in war. He gave them seasonable notice that no immunities could be claimed under the assurances given on this or any other occasion, inconsistent with the changed condition of affairs, should they madly appeal to arms.

The whole address breathes an earnest yearning for an honorable peace. It does not, however, like the unfortunate message of his predecessor, of the previous December, base the desire for peace on a confessed helplessness of the Government or an indisposition to exert its power of self-preservation. A new political era had begun, and true patriots breathed more freely.

One of the first duties of the President was to purge the Government of disloyal or doubtful men in responsible places. Long-continued Democratic precedent justified a general change of civil officers, from highest to lowest, on the ground of political differences alone. But after the treasonable developments of the previous months and years, a thorough sifting of all the Departments became indispensable, from high considerations of duty, on the basis of loyalty and disloyalty, rather than of mere partisanship. No practical measures could be adopted before this change was at least partially accomplished. The magnitude of such a work, to which the President gave the most earnest and unwearying attention for weeks, need not be indicated. The patience with which the "claims of different candidates for place were weighed, and the kindness (tempered often with a wholesome firmness) which characterized his deportment toward all, usually retained the confidence and esteem of those whom he felt compelled to disappoint.

It was during the days between his arrival in Washington and his inauguration, that the construction of his Cabinet, perhaps substantially settled in his own mind before he left Illi

nois, was definitely determined. The position occupied by Mr. Seward before the country, was such as to leave no hesitation as to the propriety of offering him the highest place of honor under the Executive, as Secretary of State. This position was, at an early day, placed at Mr. Seward's disposal. The office of Attorney General was, with like promptitude, tendered to Judge Bates, of Missouri, whose leading position as a Southern statesman, with anti-slavery tendencies, of the Clay school, had caused his name to be prominently and widely used in connection with the Presidency before the nomination for that office, made at Chicago. Governor Chase, of Ohio, who had recently been elected to a second term in the Senate, after four years of useful and popular service in the executive chair of his State, perhaps quite as early occurred to the mind of Mr. Lincoln as a man specially fitted to manage the finances of the nation through the troublous times that were felt to be approaching. This difficult post Mr. Chase surrendered his seat in the Senate to accept. Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania, selected as Secretary of War; Mr. Welles, of Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy, and Mr. Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, as Postmaster General, were all leading representatives of the Democratic element of the party which had triumphed in the late election. Mr. Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, a contemporary of Mr. Lincoln in Congress, and for years one of the most distinguished Whig politicians of the West, was tendered the place of Secretary of the Interior, which he accepted.

It deserves remark here, that John Bell, of Tennessee, who had received a large popular vote at the Presidential election, and whose strength in the electoral college made him the tl ird of four Presidential nominees, was at this time in Washington, and his appointment to a place in the Cabinet, as a loyal Border State man, was desired by many, especially in the West. But Mr. Blair, an avowed Anti-Slavery man, and viewed as one of the most radical of Republicans, was preferred to Mr. Bell, zealous partisan opponent, and one whose unreliable character as developed by his sudden defection to the Rebel cause, President Lincoln was not slow to perceive.

Next to the indispensable and primary duty of securing, in

the places under him, trustworthy men, in sympathy with himself as to the great questions uppermost in the public mind, was that of more directly preparing, at home and abroad, to grapple with the rebellion, now fully organized at Montgomery, and manifestly emerging, with mad haste, into open hostilities. This work involved nice problems of foreign diplomacy, as well as prudent care, at once to avert divisions in the loyal States when the sharp crisis should come, and to place the onus of commencing civil war unequivocally upon the secession leaders, if it were to begin. The utmost energy was also needed in so preärranging affairs that means might not be wanting when battle should be forced upon the nation.

In this view, much of the seeming mystery which enveloped the six weeks preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, disappears without inquiring into State secrets, if, at this period, there were such, over which the curtain should still rest.

For several days the inaugural address was quietly working its way among the people, giving heart to the supporters of the Government and startling the conspirators by its calm and telling appeal to thinking men every-where. With the Rebel leaders it became a study to prevent the natural effect of this State paper upon those whom they wished to follow them, not only in the eight Slave States which had, as yet, held back from the fatal step, but even in those States already in insurrection. They scrupled at nothing in their attempts to ward off its influence and to pervert the attitude of the Government. At the same time they were zealous and active in completing the direct preparations for war which had been commenced many months before.

Equally busy, and for a much longer period, had they been in poisoning the public mind of Europe. The diplomatic agents employed by Mr. Buchanan had been, in large proportion, from the Slave States, and of those from the North some were far from manifesting a genuine fidelity to the Government that had accredited them. To change these Foreign Ministers and Consuls, and to instruct their successors, was not the work of a day, nor did a removal of these men from office by any means necessarily involve their retirement from the vantage.

ground they had gained. They had rather been largely reinforced by numerous emissaries sent abroad during the preceding autumn and winter.

It was the early care of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, through the polished pen of Mr. Seward, and through the new diplomats sent abroad, to counteract these influences. From this period commenced the gradual formation and concentration of a public sentiment abroad favorable to the Government. Yet the change was not immediately apparent, and the work was a slow and toilsome one. The aim to convince Foreign Nations that the malcontents were clearly and wholly in the wrong, that the intentions of the Government were pacific, and that there was no revolutionary purpose of overturning Southern society while the dissentients yielded obedience to the Constitution and the laws, can not have failed of speedy success with candid and thoughtful men abroad as well as at home. On whom the whole responsibility of war would rest, should war come, no longer admitted of doubt.

The Montgomery "Congress," on the 9th of March, passed an act, pursuant to the recommendation of Mr. Davis, for the organization of a Confederate army. Three days later Mr. Forsyth, of Alabama, and Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, presented themselves at the State Department in Washington, in the attitude of "Confederate Commissioners," with the pretended purpose of seeking to negotiate a treaty, on the assumption of representing "an independent nation de facto and de jure." While well knowing, both from the nature of the controversy, and from the distinct avowals of Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address, that this preliminary claim, if noticed at all, would be promptly rejected, and passing over altogether the President's frank and honorable suggestion of a National Convention, in which all the States should be represented and all grievances listened to and constitutionally adjusted, they presumed to assert that the persons represented by them "earnestly desire a peaceful solution" of the "great questions" "growing out of this political separation." The President declined all recognition of these negotiating parties, and, with a simple "memorandum" of Mr. Seward, apprising them of this fact, was

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