The morning of Saturday, the 4th of March, found the President again at his post at the capitol, while the world outside was still dismal with the continuing storm. Many thousands had come from far and near to witness the re-inauguration of a loved President. The condition of the skies and the streets was dismal. The procession, which would otherwise, perhaps, have surpassed any previous one in numbers and show, lost much of its attraction. Yet was there never a more numerous and sympathetic turn-out of the people at any like

ceremony.

A committee to notify Mr. Lincoln, in a formal manner, of his re-election, had waited on him for that purpose, and Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, reported to the House, on the evening of the 1st of March, his response, which was in the following

terms:

Having served four years in the depths of a great and yet unended national peril, I can view this call to a second term in no wise more flattering to myself than as an expression of the public judgment that I may better finish a difficult work, in which I have labored from the first, than could any one less severely schooled to the task. In this view, and with assured reliance on that Almighty Ruler who has so graciously sustained us thus far, and with increased gratitude to the generous people for their continued confidence, I accept the renewed trust, with its yet onerous and perplexing duties and responsibilities.

As the hour of twelve arrived, and the two Houses of Congress were declared finally adjourned, the rain had ceased, and a vast throng of citizens, with battalions of soldiers, white and black, stood in front of the stand erected at the east front of the capitol, awaiting the approach of the procession from the Senate Chamber. Meanwhile, Hon. Andrew Johnson had taken the oath of office as Vice-President, in presence of the compact audience assembled on the floor and in the galleries of the Senate. The new Senate, called by the President to meet in special session for Executive business, had organized. At twenty-five minutes past twelve o'clock, Mr. Lincoln, having now closed the Presidential labors of his first term, entered

the Senate Chamber, accompanied by a committee of Senators and Representatives. The procession moved to the eastern portico in the following order: The Marshal of the District of Columbia; the Ex-Vice-President; the Supreme Court of the United States; the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate; the President of the United States, the President elect; the VicePresident and the Secretary of the Senate; the members of the Senate; the Diplomatic Corps; heads of Departments; Governors of States and Territories; the Mayors of Washington and Georgetown, and other persons admitted to the floor of the Senate Chamber.

As President Lincoln stepped upon the platform to address the many thousands present, the bright sunlight, hitherto obscured through all the morning, broke from the clouds, as if by miracle, and illuminated his face and form, as he bowed acknowledgment to the boisterous greeting of the people. With wonder and joy, the multitude accepted the omen as something more than unmeaning chance. The long hours of rain and cloud were over. The city roofs and spires, the trees and lawns, the hills and woods farther away, and all the landscape around were gladdened as with the freshness of the first created light.

Standing in this presence, with a clear voice, mellowed by the emotion of the hour and by the slightly plaintive tone usually pervading his utterances, Mr. Lincoln delivered the following

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended 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 engrosses 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 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 came.

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 the duration which it has already attained. 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; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offense come; but woe to that man by whom the offenses cometh." If we shall suppose 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 both 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 speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with 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 his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with ali nations.

The oath of office was then administered to the President by Chief Justice Chase. Reverberating cannon, saluting the re-inaugurated Chief Magistrate, and giving voice to the people's joy, announced the close of the brief ceremony. The address, in the grand setting of events before and after, has an imperishable luster, and a priceless worth-to be recognized wherever the tongue in which it is written is known. Compared with that of four years previous, it shows the same kindly forbearance and good-will toward his enemies, the same yearning for restored harmony under the equal laws of a free republic. Yet wide was the contrast between the two addresses, and between the two occasions. He was no longer the comparatively inexperienced statesman, entering upon a position of unexampled trials, undertaking to lead the people, at their command, through a wilderness of untold dangers to the State. He had gained the last ridge, and paused to converse with them on the duties remaining, as they entered the longed-for land. Then, he had been willing, for the sake of peacealthough he had ever felt that "if slavery was not wrong, nothing was wrong"-to leave the removal of this evil to the slow processes of time, through the convictions of those sustaining it, and the formalities of legislation; but now he rejoiced in his own decisive act, which had summarily ended this great wrong, striking down at once the cause and the support of the Rebellion. Then, he had taken his official oath before a Chief Justice whose most memorable act was an attempt, by a political decision, to render impregnable the bulwarks of slavery. Now, he was sworn by a Chief Justice who believed that no inherent right of manhood was dependent on the hue of the skin, or on

the accident of birth. Before, treason was rampant, and armed Rebels gathering in Charleston, where the germ of secession. had been for thirty years developing into sturdy growth. The same Charleston, almost a ruin, was now under the heel of the military power it had insulted, and proud South Carolina was overrun, from border to border, by unsparing Western soldiery. Four years the most wonderful the nation had ever seen, or, perhaps, ever may see-years into which the ordinary history of generations had been condensed, had made the name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN more famous and enduring than any other American name in his century. As the procession returned from the Capitol to the White House, but little after midday, hundreds of persons were gazing upward at a bright star, visible in the heavens-not less marvelous than the favorable sunlight omen. A phenomenon so rare-to many spectators altogether unknown hitherto-was the subject of universal comment.

The public reception at the White House, on Saturday evening, was attended by perhaps greater numbers than ever before. The day had closed without serious accident. Vague rumors had been in the air of a plot of assassination, to culminate on that day; but no disorder of any kind occurred. Political opponents, heretofore the most hostile, now outwardly seemed quietly to assume the attitude of reverent acquiescence in the renewed leadership of the Chosen One of the people, the Elect of Providence.

Hon. William P. Fessenden, having been elected a Senator from the State of Maine, for the term of six years, commencing on the 4th of March, 1865, had resigned his office as Secretary of the Treasury, to take his seat in the Senate on that day. Mr. Fessenden had assumed the always responsible and trying position of Finance Minister, at a time of peculiar difficulty, when the country, was comparatively depressed, in view of heavy losses in war, without decisive victories, and when a heavy conscription impending, with its burdensome demands upon the Treasury, added to the heretofore severe strain upon the financial capabilities of the Government. Despite all the criticism and captiousness incident to such a time, Mr. Fessenden, by the even tenor of his course-avoid