On the 11th of February, 1861, Mr. Lincoln left his quiet happy home at Springfield to enter upon that tempestuous political career which was to lead him through a martyr's grave to a deathless fame among the greatest and noblest patriots and benefactors of mankind. With a dim, mysterious foreshadowing of the future, he uttered to his friends and neighbors who gathered around him to say good-bye, his farewell. He seemed conscious that he might see the place which had been his home for "a quarter of a century, and where his children were born, and where one of them lay buried" no more. Weighed down with the consciousness of the great duties which devolved upon him, greater than those devolving upon any President since Washington, he humbly expressed his reliance upon Divine Providence, and asked his friends to pray that he might receive the assistance of "Almighty God." As he journeyed toward the capital, received everywhere with the earnest sympathies of the people, the loyal men of all parties assuring him of their support, his spirits rose, and when he passed the State line of his own State his hopefulness found expression in the words "behind the cloud the sun is shining still." And on he sped through the great Free States of the North. While on his way to the capital the people were everywhere deeply impressed by his modest yet firm reliance upon Providence. He went forth not leaning on his own strength, but resting on Almighty God. In the early gray of the morning of the 23d of February, 1861, he came in sight of the dome of the Capitol, then filled with traitors plotting his death and the overthrow of the Government. By anticipating the train, by which it had been publicly announced that he would pass through Baltimore, and passing through that city at night he escaped a deeply-laid conspiracy, which would otherwise have anticipated the crime of Booth. None who witnessed will ever forget the scene of his first inauguration. The veteran Scott had gathered a few soldiers of the Regular Army to preserve order and security; many Northern citizens thronged the streets, few of them conscious of the volcano of treason and murder seething beneath them. The departments and public offices were full of plotting traitors. Many of the rebel generals held commissions under the Government they were about to desert and betray. The ceremony of inauguration is always imposing; on this occasion it was especially so. Buchanan, sad, dejected, bowed with a seeming consciousness of duties unperformed, rode with the President-elect to the Capitol.