The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-08-21

After a campaign in which he re-
NAMED silent in Springfield, except
for a merely formal acceptance of the
nomination, Lincoln received the news
of his election to the presidency with
the bitter anguish of the Nations
jeopardy in his heart and in his face
the shadow of his awful responsibility.
Bor Southern leaders had warned the
country that the triumph of a minor
ity candidate and of a sectional party.
which did not put out ticket in ten
states of the South, would be the sig
nal for breaking up the Union. The
Republican party, falling far short of
a majority, had won a four-cornered
contest only because the Democrats
had divided their votes between Doug
las and Breckenridge, with a large
remnant of the old Wing party voting
for Bell.
AS state after state made good the
threat by withdrawing its representa-
ttves from Washington and by enter
ing the Southern confederacy, a moral,
financial and Industrial panic shook
the North. There rose a frantic clamor
for letting the South go or for COM
promising with it again. Seward and
a large section of the Republicans be-
gan to trim sails, and not less than 40
measures for patching up a truce were
proposed in congress.
From the new captain came the
clear command Hold firm as a chain
of steel" While so many other North
ern leaders were buffeted about like
corks in a surf Lincoln steered his
steady course in the storm by two
beacon lights: the Union, and the man
date of his election, which was to stop
the spread of slavery beyond it's ex-
listing boundaries.
Office-seekers and statesmen f1ocked
to the simple village home in Spring
field, where the president-elect- in
"snuff-colored, slouchy pantaloons and
open black vest with brass buttons
let them in and talked with them while
his two little sons noisily clambered
over him, But he kept his own coun-
sells. Without consulting anyone or
confiding in anyone, he completed the
outlines of his cabinet as he sat in
the excited hurly-burly Of the tele-
graph office election night. When the
time came to write his inaugural ad-
dress, he retired into the solitude of
bare room over a store.
One day as he and Mrs. Lincoln
were buSlly unpacklnS some purchases
which they had made in Chicago for
their journey to Washington, and he
thought of the public fears that the
rising tide of secession would engulf
Virginia and Maryland and cut off the
president-elect from the capital, the
humor of the grim situation brought a
twinkle to his eye and a pucker to his
lips. well, Mary" he said, there is
one thing likely to come out of this
scrape, anyhow. We are going to
have some new clothes"
On the eve of his departure to as
sumo the exalted station to which he
had been called, he made a journey to
the home Of his stepmother. He was
loyalty caring for the good woman
who had brought sunshine into his
| desolate boyhood. whose faithful hands
had clothed him and who had given
| him chance to go to school and
learn his letters. But her enjoyment
| of his visit was clouded with gloomy
forebodings that his enemies would
kill him and that she never would see
him again.
He had his own dark presentiments