dwell with some particularity
upon an occasion so historic. I had first encountered the newly elected
President the afternoon of the day in the early morning of which he
had arrived in Washington. It was a Saturday, I think. He came to
the capitol under the escort of Mr. Seward, and among the rest I was
presented to him. His appearance did not impress me as fantastically as
it had impressed some others. I was familiar with the Western type, and
whilst Mr. Lincoln was not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, there
was about him a dignity that commanded respect.

I met him again the next Monday forenoon in his apartment at Willard's
Hotel as he was preparing to start to his inauguration, and was struck
by his unaffected kindness, for I came with a matter requiring his
attention. This was, in point of fact, to get from him a copy of the
inauguration speech for the Associated Press. I turned it over to
Ben Perley Poore, who, like myself, was assisting Mr. Gobright. The
President that was about to be seemed entirely self-possessed; not a
sign of nervousness, and very obliging. As I have said, I accompanied
the cortege that passed from the senate chamber to the east portico.
When Mr. Lincoln removed his hat to face the vast throng in front and
below, I extended my hand to take it, but Judge Douglas, just behind me,
reached over my outstretched arm and received it, holding it during the
delivery of the address. I stood just near enough the speaker's elbow
not to obstruct any gestures he might make, though he made but few; and
then I began to get a suspicion of the power of the man.

He delivered that inaugural address as if he had been delivering
inaugural addresses all his life. Firm, resonant, earnest, it announced
the coming of a man, of a leader of men; and in its tone and style
the gentlemen whom he had invited to become members of his political
family--each of whom thought himself a bigger man than his chief--might
have heard the voice and seen the hand of one born to rule. Whether they
did or not, they very soon ascertained the fact. From the hour Abraham
Lincoln crossed the threshold of the White House to the hour he went
thence to his death, there was not a moment when he did not dominate the
political and military situation and his official subordinates. The idea
that he was overtopped at any time by anybody is contradicted by all
that actually happened.

I was a young Democrat and of course not in sympathy with