“In _your_ hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in _mine_, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail _you_. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. _You_ have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while _I_ shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend it.’” This was the spirit in which he made that journey from the West, knowing that the question of war or peace hung as upon a hair trigger. Backwoodsman and provincial though he might be, he knew the underlying American character well enough to hope, in his own heart, in spite of the secession of so many States, what was bluntly said to Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet: “Unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days.” But when Lincoln went through the guarded streets of Washington to the bayonet-girt Capitol, to have the pro-slavery Chief Justice administer the oath of office, the speech he carried in his pocket had been greatly altered. He had even been persuaded by Mr. Seward, his new Secretary of State, to modify this brave sentence: “All the power at my disposal will be used to reclaim the public property and places which have fallen; to hold, occupy and possess these, and all other property and places belonging to the government.” They thought he might be murdered before he could take the oath. There was artillery in the streets and ominous swarms of soldiers. Even on the roofs sharpshooters were to be seen. Grizzled old General Scott had sent this word from his sick bed to the President-elect: “I’ll plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of them show their heads or raise a finger I’ll blow them to hell.” Yet when Lincoln’s long body reared itself before the hushed crowd, and when he laid aside his new ebony, gold-headed cane, set his iron-bound spectacles on his nose and removed his hat--there was Douglas, his old rival for Mary Todd’s hand, his competitor for the Senate and the Presidency, his antagonist in the struggle against slavery; but a new Douglas, loyal to the Union, who was content to reach out his hand in the presence of that high-strung multitude and hold Lincoln’s hat. President Buchanan was there, withered, bent, slow, insignificant, in flowing white cravat and swallowtail coat. Beside him towered the homely rail-splitter--also in an unaccustomed and distressing swallowtail coat and wearing a stubby new beard, grown to please a little girl--who dared at last to give the national authority a voice and to say that “No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,” that “resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void,” and that “I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.”