Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/447

Rh destruction of slavery, I certainly exerted myself to the uttermost in my small way to secure his reëlection. 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 measures as was 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 indorsement of Abraham Lincoln for President and of 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 beloved 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 reëlected 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