delphia to consult with him as to his danger. What had been rumors before, had now been confirmed by enough circumstantial evidence to put him and his friends on their guard. The plot was to burn the bridges, destroy the railroad, and murder Mr. Lincoln. The evening, and a considerable part of the night, had been spent in considering the matter before they retired. And the morning had hardly dawned, when Mr. Lincoln was roused from sleep by one at the door demanding admittance, which was reluctantly granted, until it proved to be Mr. Frederick W. Seward, whom his father had sent with the following letter:

[SECRETARY SEWARD TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN.]

WASHINGTON, February 21, 1861. MY DEAR SIR:-My son goes express to you. He will show you a report made by our detective to General Scott, and by him communicated to me this morning. I deem it so important that I dispatch my son to meet you wherever he may find you. I concur with General Scott in thinking it best for you to reconsider your arrangements. No one here but General Scott and myself and the bearer is aware of this communication. I should have gone with it myself, but for the peculiar sensitiveness about my attendance at the Senate at this crisis. Very truly yours,

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

He brought with him the following communications made to his father by General Scott through his aid, Colonel Stone:

[GENERAL SCOTT TO MR. Seward.]

February 21, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:-Please receive my friend, Colonel Stone, chief of General Wightman's staff, and a distinguished young officer with me in Mexico. He has an important communication to make.

Yours truly,

WINFIELD SCOTT.

[COLONEL STONE'S REPORT.)

February 21, 1861.

A New York detective officer who has been on duty in Baltimore for three weeks reports this morning that there is serious danger of violence to, and the assassination of Mr. Lincoln in his passage

through that city, should the time of that passage be known. He states that there are banded rowdies holding secret meetings, and that he has heard threats of mobbing and violence, and has himself heard men declare that if Mr. Lincoln was to be assassinated they would like to be the men. He states further that it is only within the past few days that he has considered that there was any danger, but now he deems it imminent. He deems the danger one which the authorities and people in Baltimore cannot guard against. All risk might easily be avoided by a change in the traveling arrangements which would bring Mr. Lincoln and a portion of his party through Baltimore by a night train without previous notice.

No one of ordinary wisdom with such information before him, would have been justified in not guarding against the danger whatever others without that information might think of it. So Mr. Lincoln and his friends decided to change their plans. The original plan was, that after Mr. Lincoln's address at Philadelphia, in Independence hall, he should go the same day, Friday the 22d of February, Washington's birthday, to Harrisburg to meet the assembled Legislature of Pennsylvania, and remaining over night, go from there the next morning to Washington, passing through Baltimore at noon. Mr. Judd and Mr. Pinkerton had called to their aid Mr. Franciscus, the general manager of the Pennsylvania railroad, and Mr. Henry Sanford, representing Colonel E. S. Sanford, president of the American Telegraph Company. It was decided that Mr. Lincoln and a single companion should go, on that night, by the way of Philadelphia. So in the evening, Mr. Lincoln was called from the table, went to his room, changed his dinner dress for a traveling suit, and came down with his shawl on his arm, and a soft hat sticking out of his pocket, which was all the "Scotch plaid cap, and long military cloak" he assumed for diguise. A carriage drew up at the side door of the hotel, into which he stepped with his single escort, Colonel Lamon, a devoted personal friend from Illinois, "young, active, and almost of

herculean frame and strength," and they were driven rapidly to the depot, where a special train of a baggage car and a single passenger car awaited them. The track between the two cities was to be kept clear of everything, and the eleven o'clock Baltimore train was to be detained for them. Mr. Felton was there to see that this was done, while Mr. Pinkerton had a carriage ready to convey them through Philadelphia from one depot to the other, and Mr. Sanford saw that the telegraph wires were disconnected that no intelligence of their departure could be given in advance of them. "So at midnight they took their berths in the sleeping car of the regular train from New York, passing through Baltimore unrecognized and undisturbed, and arriving in Washington at six o'clock in the morning of February 23. Here they were met by Mr. Seward and Mr. Washburn, member of Congress from Illinois, and conducted to Willard's Hotel. The family and the suite made. the journey direct from Harrisburg to Baltimore, according to the previously published program, arriving in Washington late that evening." It was at once telegraphed to Baltimore that Mr. Lincoln had already reached Washington, so that all motive to harm his family and friends was taken away and they passed through undisturbed.

Mr. Lincoln now had a single weck in which to confer with his friends, and learn the opinions and spirit of his opponents, and receive the criticisms of his proposed policy from everybody, which he particularly courted. In this respect nobody was so free as Mr. Seward, who was to hold the most responsible position in his cabinet, in his suggestions and recommendations as to the inaugural address. It is full of interest and instruction to read the omissions, and modifications, and additions he proposed, and see what were accepted, and what rejected, as showing the peculiar characteristics of the men, and the special lines of policy which each preferred. Never had a man such a difficult task in

statesmanship before him, as Mr. Lincoln. No wonder he felt, as he so often expressed it in his addresses, that he was a very humble instrument" in the hands of God and of the nation, that he was called to "a task which did not rest even upon the Father of his Country, and so feeling I cannot but turn and look for that support without which it will be impossible for me to perform that great task, and turn then and look to the American people, and to that God who has never forsaken them." This trust in God, and confidence in the people, which he always expressed, and we soon found was so sincerc, was the ground of that confidence which the nation soon came to repose in him, and caused them to accept his guidance and carry out his measures in the darkest periods of the war. Those simple and pathetic words which he addressed to his neighbors, as he left them to assume the duties of president at such a critical time, will always hold a hallowed place in the hearts of true Americans.

My friends, no one not in my position can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century. Here my children were born, and here one of them is buried. I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me which is greater perhaps than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid which sustained him, and in the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an affectionate farewell.-[Holland, p. 254.

The 4th of March had come, when the inaugural, the great ceremonial of the nation, was to take place. In some respects it was more imposing than the crowning of a monarch, for Mr. Lincoln was the choice of the people; they conferred upon him all the power he could possess, and

they could take it from him and bestow it upon another if they found it necessary. Then the world was looking on with peculiar interest, to see what kind of a chief magistrate we had chosen, and whether he would be able to carry us through such a crisis in our history, or there was to be an end of the only successful experiment of self-government on a great scale. There was an intense and universal anxiety to know what Mr. Lincoln's position and that of the new administration was to be in regard to slavery and secession. Would he make the concessions demanded by the former, or permit under any circumstances the latter? He listened to everybody and seemed to give candid consideration to every suggestion, but strenuously refused to decide finally upon his policy until he had taken counsel with those who were to make up his cabinet, and then he would announce the result to the country in his inaugural address. The day of inauguration came this year on Monday, and opened bright and balmy like one of our Northern spring days two months later. The city was crowded with visitors, as it always is on such an occasion, only it was noticeable that there were fewer from the South and more from the North, especially from the West. Pennsylvania avenue in all its breadth, and for the mile between the President's house and the Capitol, was a mass of people, and so was every street leading into it from which a view of the procession could be obtained. There was as little show as possible of troops and military preparation against disorder and violence, and less than 700 national troops were in the city. The volunteer military companies of the city and of the district were there, where they were naturally in place, like so many other organizations of various kinds, to make the pageant more imposing. But the police had been carefully posted, the small force of regular cavalry was to guard the intersection of every street with the avenue, and squads of riflemen occupied the tops of some of the