rd my devotion to the Union as greater evidence of my loyalty
than any oath I could take."

I was close to Mr. Lincoln at the solemn moment when Chief Justice
Chase administered to him the oath of office. There was a vast
crowd of people, great enthusiasm and rejoicing, and the war was
practically over,--a far different scene from the one which took
place just four years before, when Chief Justice Taney in the same
place administered the same oath. At that time there was no noisy
demonstration. There was a solemn hush, as every one realized that
the country was about to be plunged into one of the mightiest civil
wars of all history. Indeed many men believed that there was a
concerted plot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln at that time, and that
he would never be permitted to enter upon the duties of his office.

I heard him deliver his second inaugural address,--one of his two
greatest speeches.

The last time I saw Abraham Lincoln alive was about three weeks
before his assassination, as I now recollect. He was at the White
House. There had been constant rumors throughout his first term
that he was in danger of some such outrage, but as the war drew to
a close, with the natural bitter and resentful feeling in the South,
these rumors seemed to increase. I told him what I had heard, and
urged him to be careful. It did not seem to concern him much, and
the substance of his reply was that he must take his chances; that
he could not live in an iron box, as he expressed it, and do his
duty as President of the United States.

It is difficult for one who did not live in those terrible days
from 1861 to 1865 to realize the awful shock of horror that went
through the whole Nation on the morning of April 15, 1865, when
the message came, "Abraham Lincoln is dead." In his old home at
Springfield, it seemed the whole population assembled in the public
square, and the duty devolved upon me to announce to the assembled
people that the great President had passed away. There was intense
suppressed excitement. No one dared utter a word in disparagement
of Abraham Lincoln. The crowd was in the humor for hanging to the
limb of the first convenient tree any one who dared to make a
slighting suggestion. It was not alone in Springfield, but it was
throughout the entire North that this feeling prevailed. There
was fear that the Government would go to pieces, almost that the
end of the world was at hand.

Soon the news came from di