of February 5 he submitted to his cabinet a draft covering these
points. His disappointment may be imagined when he found that not one of
his advisers agreed with him; that his proposition was "unanimously
disapproved." "There may be such a thing," remarked Secretary Welles,
"as so overdoing as to cause a distrust or adverse feeling." It was also
said that the measure probably could not pass Congress; that to attempt
to carry it, without success, would do harm; while if the offer should
really be made, it would be misconstrued by the rebels. In fact scarcely
any Republican was ready to meet the rebels with the free and ample
forgiveness which Lincoln desired to offer; and later opinion seems to
be that his schemes were impracticable.

The fourth of March was close at hand, when Mr. Lincoln was a second
time to address the people who had chosen him to be their ruler. That
black and appalling cloud, which four years ago hung oppressively over
the country, had poured forth its fury and was now passing away. His
anxiety then had been lest the South, making itself deaf to reason and
to right, should force upon the North a civil war; his anxiety now was
lest the North, hardening itself in a severe if not vindictive temper,
should deal so harshly with a conquered South as to perpetuate a
sectional antagonism. To those who had lately come, bearing to him the
formal notification of his election, he had remarked: "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." Now, mere conquest was not, in
his opinion, a finishing of the difficult work of restoring a Union.

The second inaugural was delivered from the eastern portico of the
Capitol, as follows:--

"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
t