On the evening of the third of March I went with the crowd to the White House. We were marshalled through the halls, President Pierce standing in the small chamber adjoining the East Room to receive the guests, around him being members of the Cabinet, with others distinguished in the civil, military, and naval service, and, among them, especially prominent, Senator Douglas, then at the height of his career. Persons in the procession were formally presented, receiving a kindly handshake, and then allowed to pass on. My abhorrence of the Presi-dent and of Douglas was so bitter that I did a thing for which the only excuse was my youth:--I held my right hand by my side, walked by and refused to be presented.
Next morning I was in the crowd at the east front of the Capitol, and, at the time appointed, Mr. Buchanan came forth and took the oath administered to him by the Chief Justice, Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland. Though Taney was very decrepit and feeble, I looked at him much as a Spanish Protestant in the sixteenth century would have looked at Torquemada; for, as Chief Justice, he was understood to be in the forefront of those who would fasten African slavery on the whole country; and this view of him seemed justified when, two days after the inauguration, he gave forth the Dred Scott decision, which interpreted the Constitution in accordance with the ultra pro-slavery theory of Calhoun.
Having taken the oath, Mr. Buchanan delivered the inaugural address, and it made a deep impression upon me.
I began to suspect then, and I fully believe now, that he was sincere, as, indeed, were most of those whom men of my way of thinking in those days attacked as pro-slavery tools and ridiculed as ``doughfaces.'' We who had lived remote from the scene of action, and apart from pressing responsibility, had not realized the danger of civil war and disunion. Mr. Buchanan, and men like him, in Congress, constantly associating with Southern men, realized both these dangers. They honestly and patriotically shrank from this horrible prospect; and so, had we realized what was to come, would most of us have done. I did not see this then, but looking back across the abyss of years I distinctly see it now. The leaders on both sides were honest and patriotic, and, as I firmly believe, instruments of that ``Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.''
There was in Mr. Buchanan's inaugural address a tone of deep earnestness. He declared that all his efforts should be given to restore the Union, and to restablish it upon permanent foundations; besought his fellow-citizens throughout the Union to second him in this effort, and promised that under no circumstances would he be a candidate for relection. My anti-slavery feelings remained as deep as ever, but, hearing this speech, there came into my mind an inkling of the truth: ``Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute.''
During my stay in Washington I several times visited the Senate and the House, in the old quarters which they shortly afterward vacated in order to enter the more commodious rooms of the Capitol, then nearly finished.
The Senate was in the room at present occupied by the Supreme Court, and from the gallery I looked down upon it with mingled feelings of awe, distrust, and aversion. There, as its president, sat Mason of Virginia, author of the fugitive slave law; there, at the desk in front of him, sat Cass of Michigan, who, for years, had been especially subservient to the slave power; Douglas of Illinois, who had brought about the destruction of the Missouri Compromise; Butler of South Carolina, who represented in perfection the slave-owning aristocracy;Slidell and Benjamin of Louisiana, destined soon to play leading parts in the disruption of the Union.
But there were others. There was Seward, of my own State, whom I had been brought up to revere, and who seemed to me, in the struggle then going on, the incarnation of righteousness; there was Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, just recovering from the murderous blows given him by Preston Brooks of South Carolina, --a martyr, as I held, to his devotion to freedom; there was John Parker Hale of New Hampshire, who had been virtually threatened with murder, as a penalty for his opposition to slavery; and there was bluff Ben Wade of Ohio, whose courage strengthened the whole North.
The House of Representatives interested me less. In it there sat various men now mainly passed out of human memory; and, unfortunately, the hall, though one of the finest, architecturally, in the world, was one of the least suited to its purpose. To hear anything either in the galleries or on the floor was almost an impossibility.
The Supreme Court, though sitting in a wretched room in the basement, made a far deeper impression upon me. The judges, seated in a row, and wearing their simple, silken gowns, seemed to me, in their quiet dignity, what the highest court of a great republic ought to be; though I looked at Chief Justice Taney and his pro-slavery associates much as a Hindoo regards his destructive gods.
