CHAPTER VII.

The election for President and Vice-President having taken place in November 1864, both Houses of Congress assembled in the Hall of the House of Representatives, February 8th, 1865, for the purpose of opening and counting the votes. As previously stated in these pages, the whole number of electoral votes cast was two hundred and thirty-three. Of these Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, as candidates for President and Vice-President, received two hundred and twelve votes, and George B. McClellan and George H. Pendleton, as candidates for the same offices, received 21 votes. Lincoln and Johnson was, of course, declared to be elected.

On the 4th of March, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United States for the second term, amid the acclamations of an immense throng of visitors from all parts of the United States. His inaugural address on that occasion is justly considered one of the most remarkable State papers ever written, and was the last public address he ever delivered. No extract from it could do it justice, and for that reason I give it entire :

"FELLOW COUNTRYMEN: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an ex. tended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engross the energies of the nation, little that is new

could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

"On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union and divide its effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war come.

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude or duration which it has already obtained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered-those of neither have been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.

"If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to North and South this

terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphan-to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

The closing scenes of the war were being enacted in quick succession. The rebel Congress, driven to desperation, enacted a law which was approved by their President, Jeff. Davis, March 15th, 1865, giving freedom to the slaves on condition of their entering the military service of the confederacy. Orders were at once issued from the rebel War Department for the drilling to commence, but it was too late. All their schemes failed, and the only good accomplished by it was to exhibit to the world the complete failure of the effort to establish a government, the chief cornerstone of which should be human slavery. The conspiracy was in its death throes. Gen. Grant "moved upon the rebel works" at Petersburg and carried them; the rebels retreating towards Richmond, which in turn they evacuated, and on the third day of April a corps of U. S. Colored Soldiers, under General Weitzel, took possession of the city which had been for four long years the capital of the rebel gov

ernment.

On the fourth day of April, just one month after the second inauguration of President Lincoln, his feet trod the pavements of the rebel capital, and he held a levee in the mansion just evacuated by the rebel President, who was then a fugitive, with $100,000 offered as a reward for his arrest.

On the ninth of April the whole rebel army, under General Lee, styled the army of Northern Virginia, and now reduced to about twenty-five thousand men, surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. The news flashed on the wires to all parts of the loyal States. Victory! Victory!! Peace! Peace!! were the exclamations from the lips of all, and the wildest demonstrations of delight were spontaneously indulged in by the loyal millions in every part of the land. The surrender of the rebel General Johnston, with all his forces was only a question of a few days' time.

The tremendous burden of responsibility which for four long, weary years rested upon the shoulders of President Lincoln, was now about to be removed, and he was looking forward in joyous anticipation to the day when the clangor of arms should cease, and with the smoke of battle cleared away, he should enter upon the pacific work of restoring the nation from the ravages of war to its proper condition in time. of peace.

As a fitting initial to the work of restoration, the President instituted measures to have the old flag, which had been lowered at Fort Sumter in the presence of the parricidal sons of the nation, on the fourteenth of April, 1861, elevated to its place on the fourth anniversary of that event. Orders were issued by the Secretary of War to Capt. Gadsden to have the fine ocean steamer, Arago, in readiness to convey a select party to that historic spot, the mass of ruins that was once called Fort Sumter.

Of the party who sailed on the Arago, to the number of two or three hundred, it is necessary to men

tion the names of a few who were assigned to special duties on that occasion. There was General Robert Anderson, the hero of the expedition, and the Rev. Henry Hard Beecher, who had been selected to deliver the oration. Then there was William Lloyd Garrison, of our own country, and George Thompson, of England, "life-long co-workers for the abolition. of slavery, each the champion of a great nation." There was also General, now Governor, Dix, of New York; Hon Joseph Holt, of Kentucky; Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts; Justice Swayne, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and a host of others, including Lieutenant Governor Charles Anderson, a brother to the General, and who soon after became Governor of the State of Ohio, in consequence of the death of Governor Brough.

Besides the Arago there were other vessels chartered for the occasion, each bearing some of the distinguished personages of the land, so that the entire party numbered about five thousand. A correspondent of the New York Independent, describing the approach to the battered walls of Fort Sumter, says: "There was but one strain worthy of the moment; it was neither the Star Spangled Banner nor our own grand America. We all broke forth into

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. "

The vessels had been so well timed that the party landed about noon on the day they were celebrating, April 14th. A prayer was offered by the Rev. Matthias Harris-who was Chaplain at the Fort four years before and a portion of Scripture read, followed by the reading of the dispatch sent by Major Anderson to the Government, announcing the evacuation of Fort Sumter on the 14th of April, 1861. The Major, now General, Anderson, and Sergeant Hart then stepped forward and hoisted the well preserved