“My course is as plain as a turnpike road.  It is marked out by the Constitution.  I am in no doubt which way to go.”  The wiser Southerners withdrew from this reception quite sober and thoughtful, with some new ideas about the man with whom their relationship seemed on the verge of becoming hostile.  After abundant allowance is made for the enthusiasm of Northern admirers, it remains certain that Lincoln bore well this severe ordeal of criticism on the part of those who would have been glad to despise him.  Ungainly they saw him, but not undignified, and the strange impressive sadness seldom dwelt so strikingly upon his face as at this time, as though all the weight of misery, which the millions of his fellow citizens were to endure throughout the coming years, already burdened the soul of the ruler who had been chosen to play the most responsible part in the crisis and the anguish.

March 4, 1861, inauguration day, was fine and sunny.  If there had ever been any real danger of trouble, the fear of it had almost entirely subsided.  Northerners and Southerners had found out in good season that General Scott was not in a temporizing mood; he had in the city two batteries, a few companies of regulars,—­653 men, exclusive of some marines,—­and the corps of picked Washington Volunteers.  He said that this force was all he wanted.  President Buchanan left the White House in an open carriage, escorted by a company of sappers and miners under Captain Duane.  At Willard’s Hotel Mr. Lincoln entered the carriage, and the two gentlemen passed along the avenue, through crowds which cheered but made no disturbance, to the Capitol.  General Scott with his regulars marched, “flanking the movement, in parallel streets.”  His two batteries, while not made unpleasantly conspicuous, yet controlled the plateau which extends before the east front of the Capitol.  Mr. Lincoln was simply introduced by Senator Baker of Oregon, and delivered his inaugural address.  His voice had great carrying capacity, and the vast crowd heard with ease a speech of which every sentence was fraught with an importance and scrutinized with an anxiety far beyond that of any other speech ever delivered in the United States.  At its close the venerable Chief Justice Taney administered the oath of office, thereby informally but effectually reversing the most famous opinion delivered by him during his long incumbency in his high office.

The inaugural address was simple, earnest, and direct, unincumbered by that rhetorical ornamentation which the American people have always admired as the highest form of eloquence.  Those Northerners who had expected magniloquent periods and exaggerated outbursts of patriotism were disappointed; and as they listened in vain for the scream of the eagle, many grumbled at the absence of what they conceived to be force.  Yet the general feeling was of satisfaction, which grew as the address was more thoroughly studied.  The Southerners, upon their part, looking anxiously