March 4, 1861; The New York Herald
This day is the 4th of March—a day which has been looked forward to with intense anxiety by the country. It is the day of inauguration de facto. The ceremony will take place at twelve o’clock, and Mr. Lincoln, like Mr. Buchanan, will deliver his inaugural before taking the oath of office. Never since the formation of the government was an inauguration day invested with so much gloom. There is no longer any apprehension of disturbance at the capital; but the little cloud size of a man’s hand which appeared in the Southern horizon on the morning after the 6th of November has grown and spread and become darker and darker, till now the whole Southern heavens are overcast, and tempest seems almost inevitable. The clouds at the North, too, have been ever since gathering and growing blacker, and moving forward in dense masses charged with electricity. It only needs a word and a blow from one man to produce a collision and make the theory of irrepressible conflict a fearful practical reality. A word alone may be sufficient to precipitate the antagonistic elements upon each other, but, followed up by a blow, the result is certain.
No President of the United States has ever been inaugurated under such circumstances before. It is a new era in the history of the country–and unprecedented result of a Presidential election. It is the first time that a party organized on an issue involving a controverted question of morals and religion–a party organized moreover on a purely sectional issue, in opposition to the institutions of fifteen States, divided by a geographical line from the other States–was enabled to elect its candidate to rule over the whole Union, including those fifteen Southern States, not one of which gave him a vote. Upon this dangerous issue, therefore, Mr. Lincoln has been borne into power by a party whose principles are antagonistic of the people–whose combined opposition stands recorded in the ratio of three and a half to one. The popular vote for Mr. Lincoln was 1,865,840. The whole vote was 4,739,982. The official vote against him was thus 2,874,142. If from those who voted for him we deduct the whigs and conservatives, who merely desired a change, and did not intend to endorse the Chicago platform, and who if they had to vote now would throw their suffrages in a very different direction, the strictly republican vote was about one million, against upwards of 3,700,000 opposed to the Chicago platform. Yet it has been claimed, ever since the election, that the small republican minority have a right to enforce their policy over the large majority, to the overthrow of the constitution, to the disruption of the confederacy, and even to civil war.
The result was that State after State seceded at the South, till at length a new confederation was formed and a new government is established at Montgomery. But it was earnestly hoped by every patriotic heart that the leaders of the republican party would be induced, from the necessity of the case, to consent to such guarantees and securities to the Southern States as were calculated to bring the seceders back and present the rest from following their example. Instead of this, however, they have become more and more violent every day, rejecting every concession and even the moderate compromises proposed in the border States Peace Convention.
In consequence of the soothing tone of the speeches of Mr. Seward, who, it was known, was to be Premier in Mr. Lincoln Cabinet, expectations of moderation were formed which are now dashed to earth by Mr. Seward’s recent votes. And Mr. Lincoln himself, who had remained silent at Springfield when the people demanded his voice is still the rising storm, has lately spoken in words not calculated to reassure the country or disperse the clouds of war sweeping overhead. According to our best information, he persists in the revolutionary doctrines of the Chicago platform as a practical policy of his administration, and will neither make nor advise concessions. The radical wing of the republican party appears to have prevailed over the moderates, as the Jacobins in the French Revolution prevailed over the Girondists of the party, and from the inaugural, therefore, today, nothing conciliatory is to be expected.
Now, if the tone of this official manifesto should turn out to be the nature indicated by all our intelligence from Washington–holding out the sword and not the olive branch–and if that be the real expression of the new President sentiments and the veritable programme of his policy, and not nearly a bait to gain some point from the ultras of his own party, which would be playing an extremely foolish part, the ceremony today will not be only the inauguration of a President, but the inauguration of a civil war, and it will give birth to a new conservative party at the North which will utterly rout and destroy the republican party, horse, foot and artillery. Mr. Lincoln had a glorious game in his hands, but we fear he has lost it forever. He might have saved this country and become second only to Washington in the hearts of the people; a few hours will tell whether he is the man for the occasion.