Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

We will not follow the President elect through the details of his long travel of hundreds of miles through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. During all that journey, which occupied several days, he was everywhere greeted with demonstrations of the most profound respect; and at a few places he addressed the crowds who came out to see him in plain words, full of kindness and forbearance and tenderness and cheerfulness. “Let us believe,” he said, at Tolono, “that behind the cloud the sun is shining.” Common prudence counseled him to say but little on the grave affairs of State, the administration of which he was about to assume; yet here and there, on the way, a few words responsive to friendly greetings would sometimes well up to his lips from a full heart, and give such utterances to his thoughts as to foreshadow dimly their general scope. He often alluded to the condition of the country. “It is my intention,” he said, “to give this subject all the consideration I possibly can before specially deciding in regard to it, so that when I do speak, it may be as nearly right as possible. I hope I may say nothing in opposition to the spirit of the Constitution, contrary to the integrity of the Union, or which will prove inimical to the liberties of the people or to the peace of the whole country.” ¹--“When the time does come for me to speak, I shall then take the ground that I think is right-right for the North, for the South, for the East, for the West, for the whole country.” ²

It was evident that the President elect had no conception of the depth, strength, and malignity of the conspiracy against the life of the Republic which he was so soon afterward called upon to confront. He had been too long accustomed to the foolish threats of the Oligarchy, whenever their imperious will was opposed, to believe them more in earnest now than they ever had been, or that their angry and boastful menaces, and the treasonable conduct of their representatives in Congress, would ripen into more serious action; and as he went along from city to city, talking familiarly to magistrates, and legislators, and crowds of citizens, he tried to soothe their troubled spirits and allay their apprehensions by honestly given assurances that there was “no crisis but an artificial one--none excepting such a one as may be gotten up at any time by turbulent men, aided by designing politicians. Keep cool,” he said. “If the great American people on both sides of the line will only keep their temper, the troubles will come to an end, just as surely as all other difficulties of a like character which have originated in this Government have been adjusted.” ³

On the 20th of February Mr. Lincoln was received by the municipal authorities of New York, in the City Hall, when the Mayor, who, as we have observed, had recently, in an official communication, set forth the peculiar advantages which that metropolis would secure by seceding from the State