In Philadelphia he was told by Allan Pinkerton, the detective, that there was a conspiracy to murder him when he reached Baltimore. Unless he agreed to make the rest of the journey secretly he could not reach Washington alive. He was urged not to expose himself again in public, but to go right on to his destination at once. With this knowledge of his peril, he assisted in the raising of a new flag over Independence Hall that day, and delivered a noble address, in which he recalled the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence “which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” “Now, my friends,” he cried, his shrill voice ringing to the outer edge of the excited multitude, “can this country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it.... But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say that I would rather be assassinated on this spot.... I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.” [Illustration: Mrs. Abraham Lincoln] With assassins waiting in Baltimore to save the cause of slavery and disunion by striking down the President-elect, Lincoln, by a secret change of plan, managed to reach Washington in safety. XI All the way from Springfield Lincoln carried a small handbag containing the manuscript of his inaugural address, upon which it was believed that the issue of peace or war would depend. The whole country waited anxiously to hear what the rail-splitter had to say, now that he had command of the army, navy and treasury. Would he dare to send troops to the rescue of Major Anderson and his men, besieged in Charleston harbor by rebellious South Carolina? Would he relieve the loyal garrisons hemmed in by insurgent Florida? To use force meant instant civil war. To refrain from using force meant the destruction of the Union. Only three months before, Mr. Holt, Buchanan’s loyal Postmaster General, had written to one of Lincoln’s partners: “I doubt not, from the temper of the public mind, that the Southern States will be allowed to withdraw peacefully; but when the work of dismemberment begins, we shall break up the fragments from month to month, with the nonchalance with which we break the bread upon our breakfast table.... We shall soon grow up a race of chieftains who will rival the political bandits of South America and Mexico, who will carve out to us our miserable heritage with their bloody swords. The masses of the people dream not of these things. They suppose the Republic can be destroyed to-day, and that peace will smile over its ruins to-morrow.” Away out in his Illinois home Lincoln had written these words in his inaugural address: