In the chap­ter “A Solemn Coun­cil,” dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 4, Lin­col­n’s prepa­ra­tions for his jour­ney to Wash­ing­ton coin­cide with sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty regard­ing seces­sion in Vir­ginia. A recent elec­tion showed that the major­i­ty of Vir­gini­a’s del­e­gates favored stay­ing in the Union, bol­stered by the guid­ance of Lin­col­n’s designee, Seward, who believed fur­ther con­ces­sions would be nec­es­sary to main­tain this sup­port. This opti­mistic sen­ti­ment was affirmed by the results from Ten­nessee, where vot­ers declined to hold a seces­sion con­ven­tion.

Amidst this, a “Peace Con­ven­tion” gath­ered in Wash­ing­ton in an attempt to address the seces­sion cri­sis, met at the Willard Hotel despite the tense atmos­phere of the city, rem­i­nis­cent of impend­ing war. Appre­hen­sions about poten­tial con­flict were under­lined by Edwin Stan­ton’s fears that the city might soon fall to South­ern forces. To demon­strate resilience, author­i­ties had an Amer­i­can flag raised at the par­tial­ly con­struct­ed Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment, a sym­bol of divid­ed tones reflect­ing nation­al dis­cord.

As dis­cus­sions at the Peace Con­ven­tion pro­gressed, seced­ed states con­vened in Mont­gomery to estab­lish the Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca, led by pres­i­dent How­ell Cobb. Mont­gomery, though small, became the cap­i­tal, and was known for its cen­tral role in the domes­tic slave trade. The city fea­tured an array of busi­ness­es and ser­vices, includ­ing pecu­liar adver­tise­ments and enter­tain­ing tid­bits, reflect­ing life in Con­fed­er­ate Alaba­ma.

On Feb­ru­ary 9, del­e­gates chose Jef­fer­son Davis as pres­i­dent of the new Con­fed­er­a­cy, a role he ini­tial­ly hes­i­tat­ed to accept, feel­ing uncer­tain about lead­ing in such tumul­tuous times. Vari­na Davis, his wife, har­bored con­cerns about his polit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties. Mean­while, Lin­coln was prepar­ing his own jour­ney to Wash­ing­ton, remain­ing silent but focused on the upcom­ing chal­lenges.

In the days of his jour­ney, Davis deliv­ered numer­ous speech­es advo­cat­ing for South­ern inde­pen­dence and assert­ing a break from the Union, declar­ing an end to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­pro­mise. His words reflect­ed the urgent call for com­mit­ment to the seces­sion move­ment and fore­shad­owed the deep­en­ing divide lead­ing to war .