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tives from, Louisiana and Arkansas was brought up in both Houses, but was not pressed to a vote, though reports were made in favor of such recognition and admission.

The Tariff Bill was modified, a bill for a loan of $600,000,000 was passed, with many other bills of less importance, and on the 3d of March Congress adjourned sine die.

The Senate, however, was at once convened in extra session, by a proclamation issued by the President on February 17th, as follows:

PROCLAMATION.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE.

By the President of the United States.

Whereas, objects of interest to the United States require that the Senate should be convened at twelve o'clock on the 4th of March next, to receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it on the part of the Executive:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, have considered it to be my duty to issue my proclamation, declaring that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene for the transaction of business at the Capitol, in the City of Washington, on the 4th day of March next, at noon on that day, of which all who shall at that time be entitled to act as members of that body, are hereby required to take notice.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington, this seventeenth day of February, in the year of our Lord [L. s.] one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-ninth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

The military operations during February continued to furnish cheering successes. The peace conference had not been suffered to interfere in the least with military movements. The rebel commissioners were hardly within their lines before General Grant made another movement, taking and holding, though not without severe loss, another of the roads leading southwardly out of Petersburg, called the Vaughan Road, and giving our troops command of yet another called the Boydton Plankroad. A very encouraging symptom of the situation was the increasing number of desertions from the rebel ranks,

by which General Lee's army was steadily and seriously diminishing.

Our own forces meanwhile were being continually augmented by new recruits, which were rapidly obtained, by the strong exertions made in every district to avoid a draft. Many questions arose and had to be decided by the President in reference to the draft. The following letter from him to Governor Smith, of Vermont, was called forth by complaints that its burdens were not equally distributed:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, February 8, 1865.

His Excellency Governor SMITH, of Vermont:

Complaint is made to me, by Vermont, that the assignment of her quota for the draft on the pending call is intrinsically unjust, and also in bad faith of the Government's promise to fairly allow credits for men previously furnished. To illustrate, a supposed case is stated as follows:

Vermont and New Hampshire must between them furnish six thousand men on the pending call; and being equal, each must furnish as many as the other in the long run. But the Government finds that on former calls Vermont furnished a surplus of five hundred, and New Hampshire a surplus of fifteen hundred. These two surpluses making two thousand, and added to the six thousand, making eight thousand to be furnished by the two States, or four thousand each, less by fair credits. Then subtract Vermont's surplus of five hundred from her four thousand, leaves three thousand five hundred as her quota on the pending call; and likewise subtract New Hampshire's surplus of fifteen hundred from her four thousand, leaves two thousand five hundred as her quota on the pending call. These three thousand five hundred and two thousand five hundred make precisely six thousand, which the supposed case requires from the two States, and it is just equal for Vermont to furnish one thousand more now than New Hampshire, because New Hampshire has heretofore furnished one thousand more than Vermont, which equalizes the burdens of the two in the long run. And this result, so far from being bad faith to Vermont, is indispensable to keeping good faith with New Hampshire. By no other result can the six thousand men be obtained from the two States, and at the same time deal justly and keep faith with both, and we do but confuse ourselves in questioning the process by which the right result is reached. The supposed case is perfect as an illustration.

The pending call is not for three hundred thousand men subject to fair credits, but is for three hundred thousand remaining after all fair credits have been deducted, and it is impossible to concede what Vermont asks without coming out short of three hundred thousand men, or making other localities pay for the partiality shown her.

This upon the case stated. If there be different reasons for making an allowance to Vermont, let them be presented and considered.

Yours truly,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The success at Fort Fisher was ably followed up by General Terry. One by one the rebel forts on the Cape Fear River fell into our hands, and on the 22d of February Wilmington was evacuated, and was occupied by our troops without a struggle.

Heavy cavalry expeditions were prepared and sent out through the Southwest, in different directions, and made good progress. But the crowning glory of the month was the success of Sherman's march through South Carolina. Starting from Savannah, he moved northwest through swamps which were thought impassable for an army, forced the line of the Salkehatchie River, pressed on into the heart of the State, and on the 17th entered Columbia, the capital of the State, without a battle. His presence there made the evacuation of Charleston a necessity, and on the next day our forces entered its grassgrown streets, and the old flag floated again from Fort Sumter, from which, four years before, it had been traitorously torn down. Sherman's progress northward continued to be rapid, but hardly any thing that he could do could give so much joy as the fall of that nest of treason had given. Coming, as it did, just before the 22d of February, it made the celebration of Washington's birthday one of great rejoicing. The public buildings in Washington were illuminated, and all over the country it was a day of joy and gladness of heart.

It was not the military successes alone which made the people glad a general system of exchanging prisoners had been at last agreed upon, and our poor fellows were rapidly coming forward out of those hells on earth, in which the rebel authorities had kept them.

In fact, all things seemed auspicious for the future. The close of President's Lincoln's first Administration was brilliant in itself, and gave full promise of yet brighter things to come.

CHAPTER XX.

THE CLOSE OF THE REBELLION.

THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS.---PROCLAMATION TO DESERTERS.-SPEECHES BY THE PRESIDENT.-DESTRUCTION OF LEE'S ARMY.-THE PRESIDENT'S VISIT TO RICHMOND.-RETURN TO WASHINGTON.-CLOSE OF THE WAR.

It seems hardly credible that four years should embrace within their narrow limit so immense a change as the four years of Mr. Lincoln's first Administration had brought to the country and to himself. When, on the 4th of March, 1861, he took the oath of office, administered to him by Chief-Justice Taney, the horizon was dark with storms, whose duration and violence were as yet happily unknown. He himself, as he stood on the steps of the Capitol, was an untried man, sneered at by those who had held the reins of power in the country, an object for the rising hate of the aspiring aristocracy of the South, which had already sought his life, and would have sought it with still greater vindictiveness, if a tithe of the sagacity, firmness, honesty, and patriotism which animated his breast had been understood; even then an object of interest and growing affection, comparatively unknown as he was even to his own friends, to those who saw the danger which was overhanging the country, and were nerving themselves to meet it.

But now the fierceness of the storm seemed to be passing away, and clearer skies to be seen through the rolling clouds. The citizen, who, four years before, was utterly untried and unknown, was now the chosen leader of a nation of thirty million people, who trusted in his honesty as they trusted in the eternal principles of Nature, who believed him to be wise, and knew him to be abundant in patience and kindness of heart, with an army of half a million

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men and a navy of hundreds of vessels at his command, one of the most powerful, certainly the most loved of all the leaders of the nations of the earth. There could be but one higher step for him to attain, and to that, also, in the order of Providence, he was soon to be called.

The scene of his re-inauguration was a striking one. The morning had been inclement, storming so violently that up to a few minutes before twelve o'clock it was supposed that the Inaugural Address would have to be delivered in the Senate Chamber. But the people had gathered in immense numbers before the Capitol, in spite of the storm, and just before noon the rain ceased and the clouds broke away, and, as the President took the oath of office, the blue sky appeared above, a small white cloud, like a hovering bird, seemed to hang above his head, and the sunlight broke through the clouds and fell upon him with a glory, afterwards felt to have been an emblem of the martyr's crown, which was so soon to rest upon his

head.

The oath of office was administered by Chief-Justice Chase, and the President delivered his second Inaugural Address as follows:

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:-At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city, seeking to destroy it with warseeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather

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