The pledges of his first Inaugural Address had been amply redeemed--those pledges which so many declared impossible of fulfilment, which not a few mocked as beyond human power to accomplish. The power confided to him had been successfully used “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government.” No United States fort at the time of his fall flaunted treason in the eyes of the land. The day of his murder the old flag had been flung to the breeze from Sumter with ceremonies befitting the joyous occasion, by the very hands that four years before had been compelled to lower it to arrogant traitors; and friends of freedom for man, irrespective of color or race, walked the streets of Charleston--a city of desolation, a skeleton of its former self--jubilant that, since God so willed it, in His own good time, Freedom was National and Slavery but a thing of the past. When he fell, the Nation, brought by the stern necessities of direful war to the discharge of duties befitting a better manhood, passing by all projects for an emancipation of slaves, which should be merely gradual, not content even that such emancipation had been proclaimed as a measure of military necessity, had spoken in favor of such an amendment of the Constitution as should forever prohibit any claim of property in man. Though the final consummation of that great measure had not been reached when our President was removed, it was given him to feel assured that the end was not distant, was even then close at hand. When he fell, that body of traitors which had assumed to be a Government had fled, one scarcely knew whither, with whatever of ill-gotten gains their greedy hands could grasp--their main army captive, the residue of their military force on the point of surrendering. From what had been their capital, in the mansion appropriated to the special use of the chiefest among the conspirators, he had been permitted to send words of greeting to the nation. When he fell, treason throughout the land lay gasping, dying. It needed not that dismal, dreary, mid-April day to intensify the sorrow. As on the wings of lightning the news sped through the land--“the President is Shot”--“is dying”--“is dead”--men knew scarcely how to credit the tale. When the fearful certainty came home to each, strong men bowed themselves and wept--maid and matron joined in the plaint. With no extraneous prompting, with no impulse save that of the heart alone, the common grief took on a common garb. Houses were draped--the flag of our country hung pensive at half-mast--portraitures of the loved dead were found on all. And dreary as was the day when first the tidings swept through the country, patriot hearts were drearier still. It was past analysis. It was as if chaos and dread night had come again. Meanwhile the honored dead lay in state in the country’s capitol.