No one knew all this, better than Mr. Lincoln. With no Army, no Navy,
not even a Revenue cutter left--with forts and arsenals, ammunition and
arms in possession of the Rebels, with no money in the National
Treasury, and the National credit blasted--the position must, even to
his hopeful nature, have seemed at this time desperate. To be sure,
despite threats, neither few nor secret, which had been made, that he
should not live to be inaugurated, he had passed the first critical
point--had taken the inaugural oath--and was now duly installed in the
White House. That was something, of course, to be profoundly thankful
for. But the matter regarded by him of larger moment--the safety of the
Union--how about that?
How that great, and just, and kindly brain, in the dim shadows of that
awful first night at the White House, must have searched up and down and
along the labyrinths of history and "corridors of time," everywhere in
the Past, for any analogy or excuse for the madness of this Secession
movement--and searched in vain!
With his grand and abounding faith in God, how Abraham Lincoln must have
stormed the very gates of Heaven that night with prayer that he might be
the means of securing Peace and Union to his beloved but distracted
Country! How his great heart must have been racked with the
alternations of hope and foreboding--of trustfulness and doubt!
Anxiously he must have looked for the light of the morrow, that he might
gather from the Press, the manner in which his Inaugural had been
received.
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