ction of any kind was possible on his
part.

The only bit of cheer that came to him and other Union men during this
anxious season of waiting, was in the conduct of Major Robert Anderson
at Charleston Harbor, who, instead of following the example of other
officers who were proving unfaithful, boldly defied the Southern
"secessionists," and moving his little handful of soldiers into the
harbor fort best fitted for defense, prepared to hold out against them
until help could reach him from Washington.

In February the leaders of the Southern people met at Montgomery,
Alabama, adopted a Constitution, and set up a government which they
called the Confederate States of America, electing Jefferson Davis,
of Mississippi, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia,
Vice-President. Stephens was the "little, slim pale-faced consumptive
man" whose speech in Congress had won Lincoln's admiration years before.
Davis had been the child who began his schooling so near to Lincoln in
Kentucky. He had had a far different career. Good fortune had carried
him to West Point, into the Mexican War, into the cabinet of President
Franklin Pierce, and twice into the Senate. He had had money, high
office, the best education his country could give him--everything, it
seemed, that had been denied to Lincoln. Now the two men were the
chosen heads of two great opposing factions, one bent on destroying the
government that had treated him so kindly; the other, for whom it had
done so little, willing to lay down his life in its defense.

It must not be supposed that Lincoln remained idle during these four
months of waiting. Besides completing his cabinet, and receiving his
many visitors, he devoted himself to writing his inaugural address,
withdrawing himself for some hours each day to a quiet room over the
store of his brother-in-law, where he could think and write undisturbed.
The newspaper correspondents who had gathered at Springfield, though
alert for every item of news, and especially anxious for a sight of his
inaugural address, seeing him every day as usual, got not the slightest
hint of what he was doing.

Mr. Lincoln started on his journey to Washington on February 11,
1861 two days after Jefferson Davis had been elected President of the
Confederate States of America. He went on a special train, accompanied
by Mrs. Lincoln and their three children, his two private secretaries,
and about a dozen personal friends. Mr. Seward had suggest