all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city, seeking to destroy it with war-seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences; for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!' If we shall suppose

that American slavery is one of these offences which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

It is impossible to describe the effect of the reading of this paper upon those who heard it, and those who subsequently read it. Its lofty tone and grand majesty reminded one of the Hebraic prophecies; and its dispassionate and almost merciless dissection of the issues of the struggle for the preservation of the Union, and the dying contortions of the monster slavery, were received with a feeling of awe. The impression made by the inaugural was profound. It was conclusive of the genius and the intellectual

greatness of its author. From that time forth, the world gave among its orators and statesmen a high place to Abraham Lincoln. The noblest and richest type of American manhood had at last reached his culminating period.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE FAMILY IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

Plain Living and Simple Manners-Lincoln's Kindness and His Righteous Wrath-The Sons of Lincoln-The Boy of the White House-Threats of Assassination-The President's Dealings with Office-Seekers-Sundry Anecdotes.

IMPLICITY was the main characteristic of the

SIMPLICITY

life of the Lincoln family in the White House. Lincoln's nature, as we have seen, was averse to display of any sort that made him or his prominent in the eyes of men. No man was ever more free from affectation, and the distaste that he felt for form, ceremony, and personal parade was genuine. Yet he was not without a certain dignity of bearing and character that commanded respect. At times, too, he rebuked those who presumed too far on his habitual good-nature and affable kindness. On one occasion a deputation of citizens concerned in the distribution of offices in a distant State waited upon him, with a remonstrance against certain pending appointments. Their objections were committed to writing, and the spokesman of the party read it to the President. It chanced that the paper contained an implied reflection on his old friend, Senator Baker, then a guest in the White House. Lincoln listened silently to the reading of the document, a faint flush

mounting his sallow cheeks. Then he said, taking the paper: "Is this paper mine, to do with as I please?" The spokesman replied: "Certainly, Mr. President." The President calmly laid the document on the blazing coals in the fireplace and said: "Good-morning, gentlemen."

Afterwards, speaking of the anger that the delegation were said to have manifested when they went out of the audience-chamber, Lincoln said:

"The paper was an unjust attack upon my dearest personal friend, Ned Baker, who was at that time a member of my family. The delegation did not know what they were talking about when they made him responsible, almost abusively, for what I had done, or proposed to do. They told me that that was my paper, to do with as I liked. I could not trust myself to reply in words: I was so angry. That was the whole case."

On another occasion, a still more audacious petitioner, introduced by a strong letter from a Senator of the United States, so far forgot himself as to break out with profane language in the presence of Lincoln. The President, when the offence was repeated a second time, rose with great dignity, opened the door of the audience-chamber and said: "I thought that Senator

man. I find I am mistaken. Good-evening."

had sent me a gentle

There is the door, sir.

While he was in the White House, as President of the United States, Lincoln had few amusements. The times, so full of trouble, and lamentation for the dead in the war, were not favorable to the giving of