Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

Never was a disappointment so ludicrous. No sooner did Mr. Lincoln leave his home on his official journey to Washington, than he became profuse of speech, entertaining the crowd, that at different points of the railroad watched his progress to the capital, with a peculiar style of stump oratory, in which his Western phraseology, jests, and comic displays amused the whole country in the midst of a great public anxiety. He was reported to have been for months nursing a masterly wisdom at Springfield; he was approaching the capital on an occasion and in circumstances the most imposing in American history; and yet he had no better counsels to offer to the distressed country than to recommend his hearers to “keep cool,” and to assure them in his peculiar rhetoric and grammar that “nobody was hurt,” and that there was “nothing going wrong.” The new President brought with him the buffoonery and habits of a demagogue of the back-woods. He amused a crowd by calling up to the speaker's stand a woman, who had recommended him to grow whiskers on his face, and kissing her in public; he measured heights with the tall men he encountered in his public receptions; and, as part of the ceremony of the inauguration at Washington, he insisted upon kissing the thirty-four young women who, in striped colours and spangled dresses, represented in the procession the thirty-four States of the Union. These incidents are not improperly recorded: they are not trivial in connection with a historical name, and with reference to an occasion the most important in American annals.

At Philadelphia, where Mr. Lincoln was required to assist in raising a United States flag over Independence Hall, he was more serious in his speech than on any former occasion in his journey. In his address was this language: “that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave Liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but. I hope, to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that, in due time, the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.” These words were supposed to be aimed at the institution of negro slavery in the South. With reference to them a Baltimore newspaper said: “Mr. Lincoln, the President elect of the United States, will arrive in this city, with his suite, this afternoon by special train from Harrisburg, and will proceed, we learn, directly to Washington. It is to be hoped that no opportunity will be afforded him-or that, if it be afforded, he will not embrace it-to repeat in our midst the sentiments which he is reported to have expressed yesterday in Philadelphia.” This newspaper paragraph and some other circumstances equally trivial were made the occasion of an alarm that the new President was to be assassinated in Baltimore, or on his way to that city. The alarm was communicated to Mr. Lincoln himself. He was in