TUESDAY 29
There are indications today that the Republicans are “coming down” from the Chicago Platform and that something like the Crittenden proposition will be accepted by them. Secession seems to be now a fixed fact and we have to look Disunion in the face, while a subversion of the Government is threatened. This City is still considered in danger. There is a thousand U.S. Soldiers now quartered here. An armed guard now tramps through the Halls of the Patent Office every night and the other Public Buildings are guarded in the same way. Warm & pleasant today.
The three diary manuscript volumes, Washington during the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865, are available online at The Library of Congress.