HRRON MARCH 4, 1861, ABRAHAM LINCOLN TOOK THE PRESIDENTIAL OATH of office on the steps of the Capitol. No other president of the United States entered office with the nation in such peril. Two weeks earlier, Jefferson Davis had become president of the Confederate States of America. In Washington, D.C., fear of violence hung in the air. Soldiers blocked off cross streets, and sharpshooters manned the roofs along Pennsylvania Avenue. The unfinished Capitol dome loomed in the background as if to symbolize the nation’s uncertain future. Photographer Alexander Gardner recorded the historic event, capturing Lincoln, wearing his iconic tall hat, under a wooden canopy built for the occasion (right).
In his inaugural address, Lincoln promised not to interfere with slavery where it already existed. Yet he warned secessionists that he would honor his oath “to preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution and the Union. His speech, which concluded with an appeal for those on both sides of the sectional divide to be guided by “the better angels of our nature,” struck some Northerners as too conciliatory. To many Southerners, however, it sounded like a declaration of war. HRR
MIXED MESSAGES Lincoln appears above alternately as Pax (FIRST IMAGE), the goddess of peace, and Mars, the god of war, in this cartoon by Thomas Nast (1840–1902) published in the New York Illustrated News on March 23, 1861, satirizing the contrasting reactions to Lincoln’s inaugural address (SECOND IMAGE).
