But when he reached Illinois and Ohio and other Northern States, the scene was entirely changed. All was calm and placid. No one seemed seriously to think of serious trouble. The commercial instinct prevailed. Men were too busy making money to pay attention to politics. Others felt too secure in the established order of things to believe that any great change was at hand. Sherman was impressed with the idea that either the North had no adequate realization of the true state of affairs, which was scarcely credible, or, which seemed far more likely, it would tamely submit to a dissolution of the Union. The supine weakness of Buchanan had not aroused the North to shame, nor had the aggressive treason of the conspirators who surrounded him excited its righteous wrath. It is related that Horace Greeley, on hearing of the manner in which a long-suffering but at last indignant public had overwhelmingly routed at the polls the venal ring that had long plundered and oppressed it, threw up his hands in exultation and exclaimed with an oath, "This is a great people when it gets mad!" The North had not yet "got mad," and its greatness was not yet apparent. Soon after coming North, Sherman proceeded to Washington, where Lincoln had just been inaugurated as President, John Sherman was now a Republican leader in the Senate, having been appointed in place of Chase, who had entered the Cabinet. Washington was enough of a southern city to be filled with war talk. Sherman's old friend, Anderson, had just moved his troops from Fort Moultrie into Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, and had announced his patriotic determination to hold that post for the Government at all hazards. Southern members of Congress and office holders in the Departments, even in the War Department, were openly talking treason of the rankest kind. Sherman was one day at this time taken by his brother John to the White House, where he had a long interview with the President. On learning that Sherman had just come from the South, Lincoln inquired of him "how they were getting along down there." Said Sherman, "They think they are getting along swimmingly. They are preparing for war." "Oh, well," replied Lincoln, "I guess we'll manage to keep house." This remark greatly disappointed Sherman and he changed the subject as quickly as possible. As he left the White House, however, he relieved his mind most emphatically to his brother. "John," he exclaimed fiercely, "you damned politicians have got things in a hell of a fix, and you may get out of them as you best can!"