y 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. Not that he feared the North--but the South; how would the
wayward, wilful, passionate South, receive his proffered olive-branch?

Surely, surely,--thus ran his thoughts--when the brave, and gallant, and
generous people of that Section came to read his message of Peace and
Good-will, they must see the suicidal folly of their course! Surely
their hearts must be touched and the mists of prejudice dissolved, so
that reason would resume her sway, and Reconciliation follow! A little
more time for reflection would yet make all things right. The young men
of the South, fired by the Southern leaders' false appeals, must soon
return to reason. The prairie fire is terrible while it sweeps along,
but it soon burns out. When the young men face the emblem of their
Nation's glory--the flag of the land of their birth--then will come the
reaction and their false leaders will be hurled from place and power,
and all will again be right. Yea, when it comes to firing on the old,
old flag, they will not, cannot, do it! Between the Compromise within
their reach, and such Sacrilege as this, they cannot waver long.

So, doubtless, all the long night, whether waking or sleeping, the mind
of this true-hearted son of the West, throbbed with the mighty weight of
the problem entrusted to him for solution, and the vast responsibilities
which he had just assumed toward his fellow-men, his Nation, and his
God.

And when, at last, the long lean frame was thrown upon the couch, and
"tired Nature's sweet restorer" held him briefly in her arms, the smile
of hopefulness on the wan cheek told that, despite all the terrible
difficulties of the situation, the sleeper was sustained by a strong and
cheerful belief in the Providence of God, the Patriotism of the People,
and the efficacy of his Inaugural Peace-offering to the South. But alas,
and alas, for the fallibility of human judgment and human hopes!
Instead of a message of Peace, the South chose to regard it as a message
of Menace;* and it was not received in a much better spirit by some of
the Northern