On the 4th of February, while the Peace Conference, so called, met in
Washington to consider propositions of compromise and concession, the
delegates of the seceding States assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, to
organize their conspiracy into an avowed and opened rebellion. On the
9th Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was elected President, and
Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President of the new
Confederacy. On the 18th Davis was inaugurated.

On the 1st of March General Beauregard was, by the rebel government,
placed in command of the defence of Charleston harbor, with orders to
complete preparations for the capture of Fort Sumter. The Governor had
been exceedingly anxious that the capture should be attempted before the
4th of March. "Mr. Buchanan cannot resist," he wrote to Davis, "because
he has not the power. Mr. Lincoln may not attack, because the cause of
quarrel will have been, or may be considered by him, as past."

President Lincoln was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1861. With an
unanswerable argument against disunion, and an earnest appeal to reason
and lawful remedy, he closed his inaugural address with the following
impressive declaration of peace and good-will:--


In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war.

The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without
being yourselves the aggressors; you can have no oath registered in
heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn
one,--to preserve, protect, and defend it.