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 upor 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; Cassius M. Clay, to Russia; Carl Shurz, to Spain; James E. Harvey, to Portugal; Charles F. Adams, to England; 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 M tary Affairs. A portion of the time of this extra session was 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, attended 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 eeitful 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

circumstances, impracticable. There never was an intention to evacuate it. The embarrassment of the government was, to avoid the difficulty of military reinforcements by some artifice that would equally well answer its purposes. That artifice continued for a considerable time to be the subject of secret and sedulous consultation.

While a portion of the public were entertained in watching the surface of events, and were imposed upon by deceitful signs of peace, discerning men saw the inevitable consequence in the significant preparations made on both sides for war. These preparations had gone on unremittingly since the inau guration of the Lincoln government. The troops of the United States were called from the frontiers to the military centres; the Mediterranean squadron and other naval forces were or dered home; and the city of Washington itself was converted into a school where there were daily and ostentatious instructions of the soldier. On the other hand, the government at Montgomery was not idle. Three military bills had been passed by the Confederate Congress. The first authorized the raising of one hundred thousand volunteers when deemed necessary by the President; the second provided for the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, which was to be formed from the regular and volunteer forces of the different States; and the third provided for the organization of a Regular Army, which was to be a permanent establishment. But among the strongest indications of the probability of war, in the estimation of men calculated to judge of the matter, and among the most striking proofs, too, of devotion to the cause of the South, was the number of resignations from the Federal army and navy on the part of officers of Southern birth or association, and their prompt identification with the Confederate service. These resignations had commenced during the close of Mr. Buchanan's administration. On the accession of Mr. Lincoln, Adjutantgeneral Cooper had immediately resigned; and the distinguished example was followed by an array of names, which had been not a little illustrious in the annals of the Federal service. While the South was entreating peace, and pursuing its accomplishment by an amicable mission to Washington, a strong outside pressure was being exerted upon the adminis tration of Mr. Lincoln to hurry it to the conclusion of war

He had been visited by a number of governors of the Northern States. They offered him money and men; but it was understood that nothing would be done in the way of calling out the State militia and opening special credits, until the Southern revolutionists should be actually in aggression to the authority of the Federal government. Another appeal was still more effectively urged. It was the argument of the partisan. The report of the intended evacuation of Fort Sumter, and the apparent vacillation of the administration, were producing disaffection in the Black Republican party. This party had shown a considerable loss of strength in the municipal elections in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other parts of the West; they had lost two congressmen in Connecticut and two in Rhode Island. The low tariff, too, of the Southern Confederacy, brought into competition with the high protective tariff which the Black Republican majority in Congress had adopted, and which was popularly known as "the Morrill Tariff," was threatening serious disaster to the interests of New England and Pennsylvania, and was indicating the necessity of the repeal of a law which was considered as an indispensable party measure by the most of Mr. Lincoln's constituents.

For weeks the Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln had been taxed to devise some artifice for the relief of Fort Sumter, short of open military reinforcements (decided to be impracticable), and which would have the effect of inaugurating the war by a safe indirection and under a plausible and convenient pretence. The device was at length hit upon. It was accomplished by the most flagrant perfidy. Mr. Seward had already given assurances to the Southern commissioners, through the intermediation of Judge Campbell, that the Federal troops would be removed from Fort Sumter. Referring to the draft of a letter which Judge Campbell had in his hand, and proposed to address to President Davis, at Montgomery, he said, "before that letter reaches its destination, Fort Sumter will have been evacuated." Some time elapsed, and there was reason to dis trust the promise. Colonel Lamon, an agent of the Washington government, was sent to Charleston, and was reported to be authorized to make arrangements with Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, for the withdrawal of the Federal troops from Fort Sumter. He returned without any accomplishment of