are going to vote against me. it at all."

I do not understand

Here his voice was choked with emotion, and he rose and walked about the room until he regained his self-possession. Then, with his face wet with tears, he continued:

I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same thing; and they will find it so. Douglas does n't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright."

Much of this, and other words to the same import, was said as if Lincoln was thinking aloud, soliloquizing, as was sometimes his wont. Then he went on, saying: "Does n't it appear strange that men can ignore the moral aspects of this contest? A revelation could not make it plainer to me that slavery or this Government must be destroyed. The future would be something awful, as I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand," alluding to the Testament which he held in his hand; "especially with the knowledge of how these ministers are going to

vote. It seems as if God had borne with this thing [slavery] until the very teachers of religion had come to defend it from the Bible, and to claim for it a divine character and sanction; and now the cup of iniquity is full, and the vials of wrath will be poured out."

These words, like many others of Lincoln's, uttered before he was chosen to the Presidencyeven before he was nominated, as some of them were, -indicate almost a certain knowledge of coming events which is very like prophecy. It is not unlikely that Lincoln saw long before anybody else did that he would be the nominee of his party in 1860, and it is certain that he saw that his election was assured as soon as the nominations were all made. There is something awful in his standing here at the parting of the ways, his private life on the one hand and his public life on the other, and solemnly predicting, as it were, the day of wrath that was coming upon the people of the United States. Not in the South alone, but even in New England, were found clergymen who taught and preached that slavery was right and just, of divine origin, and that men who raised their hands against it were guilty of a species of high treason. Lincoln had looked into the heart of things; and, like Thomas Jefferson, regarding this great wrong against humanity, he trembled for his country when he remembered that God is just.

Threats of leaving the Union came loud and vociferous from the slave States as soon as Lincoln's election was assured and the returns were all in. It

is more than likely that these threats were only in consequence of a long-laid plan to leave the Union on the very first offering of an excuse. The South could not live amicably alongside of free territory. Lincoln spoke only the absolute truth when he said that the Government could exist no longer half slave and half free. Now that the triumph of what they called a sectional party had given them an excuse, they were ready to go; but they must needs make a great deal of bluster about it. They went out with a grand display of resolutions and fiery speeches.

Meanwhile, however, the allies of treason and rebellion in the Cabinet were doing what they could to make things easier for the Rebel States when the final blow should come. John B. Floyd, a Southern man, was Secretary of War, and he scattered the army all over the South, one of its largest sections being sent as far away as possible in the interior of Texas, so that it should not be at hand when the new President should come to the national capital. Floyd also moved large quantities of arms and munitions of war from the forts and arsenals in the North to those in the South. Mr. Isaac Toucey, a Northern man, but completely in the hands of the conspirators, sent the little navy of the United States to the four quarters of the globe, so that no naval force should be available when the conspiracy should be ripe. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, afterwards a general in the Rebel army, was then Secretary of the Treasury, and after he had purposely involved the national finances in difficulty, he resigned. He left the Treasury empty. Attorney-General Black had given

his official opinion that neither Congress nor the President could carry on any war against any State. James Buchanan, a weak old man, was nominally President, but the conspirators in the Cabinet carried forward their plans with a high hand. Everything that happened in governmental circles in Washington was immediately known in the councils of the secessionists, South Carolina being the hotbed of treason. The Southern Senators and Representatives, almost without exception, remained in Washington, occupying their desks in the Senate and House, drawing pay and official perquisites up to the last moment; and, holding possession of the Government as these men did, they were at the same time plotting to overthrow it.

Some of the Northern Democrats who had stood by Buchanan and his party until now began to murmur at his supple willingness to help the cause of the rebellion, now assuming formidable proportions. Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, resigned because the President refused to send reinforcements to Major Anderson, who was shut up with a little force in Fort Moultrie, Charleston Harbor. This is the same Anderson, then a lieutenant, who mustered Abraham Lincoln into the service of the United States, at Dixon's Ferry, during the Black Hawk war. soon as South Carolina should secede from the Union, Fort Moultrie and other fortifications in Charleston Harbor were certain to be seized. Mr. Black, too, resigned, and Edwin M. Stanton, a staunch Democrat and Unionist, was appointed in his place. General John A. Dix, of New York, succeeded Howell

As

Cobb as Secretary of the Treasury. It was this unflinching Union man, General Dix, who, while in the Cabinet of Buchanan, sent to the commander of a threatened revenue cutter the famous despatch: "If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot!" Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, also a strong Union man, took the office of Secretary of War, made vacant by Floyd, who had added official dishonesty to treason.

Stanton, in the Attorney-General's office, was a very different sort of man from Black, who had retired to Pennsylvania. The infamous Jacob Thompson, who kept his office of Secretary of the Interior for the purpose, apparently, of helping his fellowconspirators in the slave States, advised a surrender of the forts in Charleston Harbor and the withdrawal of Major Anderson and his little force. Stanton said to the President:

"Mr. President, it is my duty, as your legal adviser, to say that you have no right to give up the property of the Government, or abandon the soldiers of the United States to its enemies; and the course proposed by the Secretary of the Interior, if followed, is treason, and will involve you, and all concerned, in treason."

For the first time, treason had been called by its right name in the Cabinet councils of James Buchanan. It was none too soon. The traitors now saw that their work in Washington must close; the times were ripe for open revolt; and while some waited until the open secession of their States called them home, others hastened southwards, eagerly