that of Congress to prevent secession. He based this upon the official opinion of his Attorney-General. Last minute changes in his Cabinet did not come in time to readjust matters that former members had prepared for Lincoln's term. Buchanan's Secretary of War, a Southerner, in the belief that to the states individually belonged the forts and arsenals in them, had not prevented their being taken possession of by the states. He scattered the United States Army so thoroughly through the South that it was not on hand in a body for a new President to manipulate promptly. The Secretary of the Navy had the small Navy "sent to the four quarters of the globe," so that no naval force was quickly available for any Northern move. The Secretary of the Interior was the busiest of all. As for the Secretary of the Treasury-he left the Treasury empty. This was the inheritance Lincoln came into! CHAPTER XXVI LINCOLN GOES TO WASHINGTON So the storm clouds kept lowering during Lincoln's period of inaction as President-elect. The time now approached when he must leave the quiet of Springfield for the turbulence of the Nation's Capital. There were qualms in his heart at the actual parting. Perhaps he felt then as he had before, when elected to Congress, "it has not pleased me as much as I expected," for he lingered around familiar places as if he half wished he might be spared the turmoil of Presidency for the serenity of country law practice. Some premonition of his fate in public office seemed foreshadowed in these days even to the point of rousing Mrs. Lincoln's second sense and uncanny intuition to a point bordering on the superstitious. Lincoln, himself, intimates this in his own way in relating the following "omen": "It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great 'Hurrah, boys!' so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau-(and here he got up and placed the furniture to illustrate the position)—and, looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected, nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the top of the nose of one being about three inches from the top of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again I saw it a second time-plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off and, in the excitement of the hour, forgot all about it-nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a 'sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term." The departure for Washington was too momentous a step to be made without due farewell to his aged step-mother. She was now so old that there was reasonable fear that she might not live to see his return. Before starting for Washington, therefore, Lincoln went to Coles County to visit his "folks" and came first to the home of his cousin and companion, good Dennis Hanks, who celebrated "Abe's" arrival with a neighborhood jamboree of carefree country gayety and plenteous food. This was the last old-time party of its kind that Lincoln, already in the shadow of the White |