Inauguration Day ~ March 4, 1861

"Washington looked like an armed camp.  Cavalry and artillery had been clattering through the streets all morning.  Troops were everywhere.  Rumors of assassination plots, of Southern plans to seize the capital and prevent the inauguration, had put the army on the alert.
Shortly after noon, the carriage bearing President James Buchanan and President-elect Abraham Lincoln bounced over the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, heading for Capitol Hill.  Infantrymen lined the parade route.  Army sharpshooters crouched on nearby rooftops.  Soldiers surrounded the Capitol building, and plainclothes detectives mingled with the crowds.  On a hill overlooking the Capitol, artillerymen manned a line of howitzers and watched for trouble."

Tomorrow:  More of Russell Freedman's LINCOLN A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY, Clarion Books, 1987.

Henry D. Thoreau ~

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

~ Henry D. Thoreau (Waldon, published in 1854) "Where I lived, and What I lived for."

H. D. Thoreau Memorial at Waldon*

*Photo source:  Wikipedia