were now Republicans in accord with him on present questions, that was sufficient for his purpose. Old things in parties were with him done away. There was a new departure in political organizations. His administration and his Cabinet were to be Republican irrespective of past parties. But schemes to secure a Seward Cabinet commenced early, and were persistently followed up to the inauguration. Weed, as already remarked, did not return to Albany after the Chicago nomination until he visited, and had an interView with Mr. Lincoln in his "secluded abode," at Springfield, the capital of Illinois. This was the beginning, and nothing was accomplished. Late in the Summer, Weed met certain gentlemen in Saratoga, when something definite respecting the Cabinet in the event of Mr. Lincoln's election was attempted. After the election Mr. Lincoln was urged to visit Auburn and consult Mr. Seward, who " had a plurality of votes on the first ballot" at Chicago, but he declined the invitation. It was winter, the address says, "at quite a late period of the session, before he had disclosed his intention to place Mr. Seward in the most prominent place in the Cabinet."

Most of the facts in relation to the formation of the Cabinet I received from the mouth of Mr. Lincoln, who had apparently no concealments on the subject. On the day of the presidential election, November 3d, 1860, he said, the telegraph operator at Springfield invited him to occupy his room and obtain intelligence of the result as it was received. About two o'clock on Wednesday morning sufficient information had come in to leave no doubt of his election. He then retired, but hardly to sleep. Although fatigued

and exhausted, he got but little rest. Oppressed with the overwhelming responsibility that was upon him, which in the excitement of the campaign he had not fully realized, he felt the necessity of relief and assistance to sustain him in the not distant future. He did, he said, what probably all his predecessors had done— looked about him at once for the men on whom he could depend, and who would be his support in the trials that were before him. The reliable and marked men of the country were in his mind, but there were many other things to be taken into consideration-different influences, sectional and political, to be reconciled. He did not again sleep until he had constructed the framework of his Cabinet. It was essentially the same as that with which four months later he commenced his administration. This voluntary and unsolicited statement was from the man whose mind, Mr. Adams says, months after his election, "had not even opened to the nature of the crisis." Circumstances and extended details which Mr. Lincoln gave, relating to individuals and movements, Cabinet and other appointments need not be here introduced. This generalization is evidence that even at that period he had a policy and purpose, which he carried into effect, wholly distinct from and independent of the plans which Mr. Seward and his friends had marked out. He preferred to select his own advisers, and did so instead of permitting Mr. Seward to do it for him. He had in view a Republican, not a Whig administration, and therefore required and formed a Republican Cabinet. There was but one member of it appointed on the special, urgent recommendation and advice of Mr. Seward

and his friends, who preferred him to Mr. Chase for the Treasury, but that gentleman was soon with Mr. Seward's approval, transferred to hyperborean regions, in a way and for reasons never publicly and distinctly made known.

The unhappy condition of the country during the winter of 1861 is not overstated in the "Memorial Address." It was as well understood and as deeply deplored at Springfield and in remote sections as at Washington, where Congress frittered away its time, and pursued a course as unpatriotic as, and scarcely less reprehensible than, the Administration which proclaimed its inability to coerce a state. The President elect witnessed the factious and disunion proceedings with unutterable distress, but he was powerless; and it was among the most painful afflictions of his varied and eventful life, to know and feel that he could do nothing to arrest threatened and impending calamities. Through the weary winter months that intervened between the election in November and the inauguration in March, he beheld the executive authority paralyzed or wielded in the interest of those who threatened the integrity of the Union. Mr. Adams says:

"Treason had crept into the very heart of the Cabinet, and a policy had been secretly at work to paralyze rather than to fortify the resources of the Executive. Everything was drifting at the mercy of the wind and waves.... A message was sent to Congress by Mr. Buchanan lamenting the fact of what he chose to call a secession of several States, but coupling with it a denial of any power to coerce them. This was in its essence an abandonment of all right to control popular resist

ance in that form. In the condition things were at that moment, with a Cabinet divided and both branches of the legislature utterly without spirit to concert measures, the effect was equivalent to disintegration."

What executive or legislative energy or ability was manifested by Congress at that crisis? Mr. Lincoln was a private citizen, "at home in Illinois," while this "secession of several states" was going on, holding no office, exercising no authority, "giving no signs of life," Mr. Adams says; but well aware that every movement and every expression of his were watched and weighed not only by secessionists, but by men in place who did nothing to relieve but much to oppose and embarrass him in the duties upon which he was soon to enter. Mr. Seward was at that time in the Senate, in a position where a disinterested and patriotic statesman of experience, sagacity, and foresight, possessed of an energetic, capable, and master mind, and of executive power, would be expected to detect and expose error and make a decisive stand against avowed and approaching treason-treason which had in fact already, says the address, crept "into the very heart of the Cabinet." But there was not a measure of resistance, scarcely a note of alarm or even of apprehension, from the New York Senator, who "received a plurality of votes" for President on the first ballot in the Chicago Convention, and who was at the time not only a Senator but the accredited Secretary of State of the incoming Administration. To him, an actor in an exalted official position, a Senator of reputed sagacity and known expe

rience, who was in daily personal and official intercourse with men of all parties, at the seat of government, the President elect from his "secluded abode," and the whole country indeed, naturally looked with some degree of expectation, if not of great confidence, for decisive action, or at least correct information as to the state of affairs and probable results. Mr. Seward had a theory, but not such as to either inspire hope or create alarm. It was of a pacific tendency, and calculated to calm apprehensions in that "perilous emergency." He anticipated, and said, there would be harmony and reconciliation within ninety days. If sincere in his prophetic assertions, he did not exhibit intelligence or statesmanship superior to Mr. Lincoln; if insincere, he was even less reliable and faithful. Mr. Lincoln had the inclination and certainly the wish to believe that his selected counsellor, who was in the Senate, with opportunities at the time superior to himself or any other man to know the facts, was correct in his predictions and conclusions. Unfortunately Mr. Seward was mistaken. Mr. Adams says: "Wiseacres have commented on his failure of sagacity in making over-confident predictions. But what was he to do in the face of all the nations of the earth?" He certainly was not to falsify the truth; he was not to sacrifice his integrity, nor did the "wiseacres" accuse him of any such sacrifice when they "commented on his failure of sagacity." It is to be presumed that he believed what he asserted, even if it makes him a less "sagacious statesman" than is represented in the "Memorial Address." His sagacity is not to be fortified at the expense of his veracity.