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| Costumes worn at the inauguration Ball.1 |
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men and beautiful and elegantly dressed women.
The utmost gayety and hilarity prevailed; and every face but one was continually radiant with the unmixed joy of the hour.
That face was Abraham Lincoln's. The perennial good-humor of his nature could not, at all times, banish from his countenance
that almost painfully sad thoughtfulness of expression, more frequently seen afterward, when the cares of State had marred his brow with deeper furrows.
Of all that company, he was the most honored and the most burdened; and with the pageantry of that Inauguration Day and that Inauguration Ball, ended, for him, the poetry of his Administration.
Thereafter his life was spent in the sober prose of dutiful endeavor to save and redeem the nation.
On the day after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, the Senate, in extraordinary session, confirmed his appointments of Cabinet ministers.
He had chosen for Secretary of State, William H. Seward, of New York; for Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; for Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania; for Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, of Connecticut; for Secretary of the Interior, Caleb Smith, of Indiana; for Postmaster-General, Montgomery Blair, of Maryland; and for Attorney-General, Edward Bates, of Missouri.2 Mr. Seward had been a prominent candidate for a nomination for the Presidency, at Chicago.
On that account,
1 the dress of one of the ladies was thus described by an eye-witness:--“the robe was of white illusion, decollete, puffed sleeves, with six flounces, embroidered with cherry silk; an overskirt of cherry satin, looped up with clusters of white roses; a pointed waist of same, edged with a quilting of white satin; head-dress, a chaplet of ivy; ornaments, diamonds and opals.”
2 See the Frontispiece to this volume. The picture represents the President and his Cabinet, with General Scott, in consultation concerning military affairs. I have endeavored to give this picture an historic value, by presenting not only a correct portraiture of the men, but also of the room in which the meetings of the Cabinet were held, in the White House. The drawing of the room was made for me, with great accuracy, by Mr. C. K. Stellwagen, of the Ordnance Department, in October, 1864, and the grouping of the figures by Mr. Schuselle, an accomplished artist of Philadelphia. This council chamber of the Executive is on the southern side of .the White House. overlooking the public grounds, the Smithsonian Institute, the unfinished Washington Monument, and the Potomac River. The Washington Monument is seen, in the picture, through one of the windows.
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