Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois on February 11, 1861 and arrived in Washington, D.C. on February 23. On March 3 he was inaugurated as the sixteenth President of the United States, beginning one of the most difficult presidencies in American history.

Even during this time of crisis, Lincoln extended a message of peace in his inaugural address:

"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

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