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284 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

with its rebel capital was in the firm grip of Ulysses S. Grant. To those who
knew the situation it was evident that unless some startling change was made
the confederacy had but a short time to live, and that time full of misery. This
condition of things made the air at Washington dark and lowering. The
friends of the confederate cause here were neither few nor insignificant.
They were among the rich and influential. A wink or a nod from such men
might unchain the hand of violence and set order and law at defiance. To
those who saw beneath the surface it was clearly perceived that there was
danger abroad; and as the procession passed down Pennsylvania Avenue, I
for one felt an instinctive apprehension that at any moment a shot from some
assassin in the crowd might end the glittering pageant, and throw the country
into the depths of anarchy. I did not then know, what has since become history,
that the plot was already formed and its execution contemplated for that
very day, which though several weeks delayed, at last accomplished its
deadly work. Reaching the Capitol, I took my place in the crowd where I
could see the Presidential procession as it came upon the east portico, and
where I could hear and see all that took place. There was no such throng as
that which celebrated the inauguration of President Garfield nor that of
President Rutherford B. Hayes. The whole proceeding was wonderfully
quiet, earnest, and solemn. From the oath, as administered by Chief Justice
Chase, to the brief but weighty address delivered by Mr. Lincoln, there was
a leaden stillness about the crowd . The address sounded more like a sermon
than like a state paper. In the fewest words possible he referred to the condition
of the country four years before, on his first accession to the presidency —
to the causes of the war, and the reasons on both sides for which it
had been waged. "Neither party," he said, "expected for the war the magnitude
or the duration which it had already attained. Neither anticipated that
the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding." Then in a few short sentences, admitting the conviction
that slavery had been the "offense which, in the providence of God, must
needs come, and the war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came," he asked if there can be "discerned in this, any departure from those
Divine attributes which the believers in a loving God always ascribe to him?
Fondly do we hope," he continued, "fervently do we pray that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until
all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand