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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 283

I thought with Mr. Lincoln, that it was not wise to "swap horses while crossing
a stream." Regarding, as I did, the continuance of the war to the complete
suppression of the rebellion, and the retention in office of President Lincoln
as essential to the total destruction of slavery, I certainly exerted myself to
the uttermost, in my small way, to secure his re-election. This most important
object was not attained, however, by speeches, letters, or other electioneering
appliances. The staggering blows dealt upon the rebellion that year by
the armies under Grant and Sherman, and his own great character, ground all
opposition to dust, and made his election sure, even before the question
reached the polls. Since William the Silent, who was the soul of the mighty
war for religious liberty against Spain and the Spanish inquisition, no leader
of men has been loved and trusted in such generous measure as Abraham
Lincoln. His election silenced, in a good degree, the discontent felt at the
length of the war. and the complaints of its being an Abolition war. Every
victory of our arms, on flood and field, was a rebuke to McClellan and the
Democratic party, and an endorsement of Abraham Lincoln for President,
and his new policy. It was my good fortune to be present at his inauguration
in March, and to hear on that occasion his remarkable inaugural address. On
the night previous I took tea with Chief Justice Chase, and assisted his
helmed daughter. Mrs. Sprague, in placing over her honored father's shoulders
the new robe, then being made, in which he was to administer the oath
of office to the re-elected President. There was a dignity and grandeur about
the Chief Justice which marked him as one born great. He had known me in
early anti-slavery days, and had welcomed me to his home and his table,
when to do so was a strange thing in Washington; and the fact was by no
means an insignificant one.

The inauguration, like the election, was a most important event. Four
years before, after Mr. Lincoln's first election, the pro-slavery spirit determined
against his inauguration, and it no doubt would have accomplished its
purpose had he attempted to pass openly and recognized through Baltimore.
There was murder in the air then, and there was murder in the air now. His
first inauguration arrested the fall of the Republic, and the second was to
restore it to enduring foundations. At the time of the second inauguration the
rebellion was apparently vigorous, defiant, and formidable; but in reality
weak, dejected, and desperate. It had reached that verge of madness when it
had called upon the negro for help to fight against the freedom which he so
longed to find, for the bondage he would escape — against Lincoln the emancipator
for Davis the enslaver. But desperation discards logic as well as law,
and the South was desperate. Sherman was marching to the sea, and Virginia