text: President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal.The Confederacy selected Jefferson Davis as its provisional president on February 9, 1861.Attempts at compromise followed but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected the proposed Crittenden Compromise as contrary to the Party's platform of free-soil in the territories.Lincoln said, "I will suffer death before I consent ...to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right".Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which passed Congress and was awaiting ratification by the states when Lincoln took office.That doomed amendment would have protected slavery in states where it already existed.On March 4, 1861, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln said that, because he holds "such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable".A few weeks before the war, Lincoln sent a letter to every governor informing them Congress had passed a joint resolution to amend the Constitution.On February 11, 1861, Lincoln gave a particularly emotional farewell address upon leaving Springfield; he would never again return to Springfield alive.Lincoln traveled east in a special train.Due to secessionist plots, a then-unprecedented attention to security was given to him and his train.En route to his inauguration, Lincoln addressed crowds and legislatures across the North.The president-elect evaded suspected assassins in Baltimore.On February 23, 1861, he arrived in disguise in Washington, D.C., which was placed under substantial military guard.