M

XXXI.

JOHN CONNESS.

UCH has been written concerning the rela

tions of Abraham Lincoln and Salmon P. Chase, but the history of their separation in 1864 and the acceptance of the resignation of Mr. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, as given by the President in a semi-official manner at that time, has not been presented to the public.

The prosecution of the war had not up to that time been very successful, and the public credit was at its lowest ebb. Gold was at 2.80, and the people were rather discouraged. The first term of Mr. Lincoln was drawing to a close, and by common consent the President was a candidate for re-election. As stated by himself in his own way, "it was not well to swap horses in the middle of a stream.”

He was willing to be a candidate because he could best represent the issue with the Democratic Party, who were declaring the war a failure, and preparing to put a candidate in the field upon that declaration.

Thus, as in the instance of his first nomination,

without personal ambition, he was willing to be an instrument in the hands of the people to test the

great issue before them.

He had declared the pur

administration to be the The Democratic Party

pose of the war by the preservation of the Union. claimed that the war for this purpose was a failure, and that the Union could only be preserved by peace and negotiation. This was the issue then clearly made up between the Democratic and Republican parties.

Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, was also a candidate for the Presidency. That he was an able, upright and patriotic man need not be stated. He represented such of the Republican Party as believed that the war had not been waged with the vigor and power necessary to conquer a peace; and also by those who wished it carried on more with reference to the expurgation of slavery than Mr. Lincoln had done.

The President held that it was his duty to preserve the Union, with or without slavery, while Mr. Chase believed, as an old antislavery man, that the destruction of slavery was the chief means in the prosecution of the war for the preservation of the Union.

The candidature of both was calculated to lead to infelicitous relations between the two, and it did.

This was doubtless by reason of intemperate sup

porters of each, who engaged in making statements derogatory to the other.

The effect upon their candidates was different. Mr. Lincoln took it all easy and let tales brought to him pass for their value, which was not great. Mr. Chase, very differently constituted, felt otherwise. Oversensitive and deeply passionate, he readily saw that the partisans of Mr. Lincoln were doing him injustice, and that the President was not wholly blameless.

Since holding the portfolio of Secretary of the Treasury, he had presented his resignation several times theretofore, and which the consummate address and genuine kindness of Mr. Lincoln enabled him to parry and put aside. The last, however, was accompanied with peculiar irritation, and was accepted.

It took the Senate by surprise. A message to that body, with the nomination of David Todd, of Ohio, for Secretary of the Treasury, in place of Salmon P. Chase resigned, was the first intimation the Senate had of the important event.

The Senate went at once into executive session, and referred the nomination to its Finance Committee and then adjourned.

The committee met, and, after a full consultation, resolved to wait on the President in a body and ascertain why the resignation, whether it could not be reconsidered, and, if it could not, why the name of

David Todd was sent in as the successor of Mr. Chase.

The committee went to the Executive Mansion, where the President met them, and the case and the object of their visit were stated by William Pitt Fessenden, their chairman.

It is not putting it too strongly to say that the committee, or many members of it, felt that the fault was not alone that of Mr. Chase, and that in all probability the President was somewhat to blame; that the change in the Treasury Department at that time, where Mr. Chase had done valuable work, would be a public misfortune, and that the nomination of Todd showed a want of appreciation by the President of the condition of the public credit.

David Todd had been one of the sturdiest of the "War Governors," and was known as a sterling patriot, but no one thought of him as a proper head of the Treasury Department then, or as a fitting successor of Chase.

Mr. Lincoln at once relieved the committee concerning this last consideration, by stating that he had a dispatch from Governor Todd declining the office; but before dismissing that branch of the subject, said he had met many men since our troubles began, and comparing him with others-taking him all in all-he thought "Dave Todd was considerable of a man."

He then went at length into a history of his relations with Governor Chase," as he styled him; how he came to invite him, and in fact every other member of his Cabinet, to the places they filled, stating that he was governed in the selection of each by the need of representing the geographical and political sections of the country, and the prominence of each as representing opinion, giving the idea that it was not agreement in a Cabinet that he sought so much as representatives of differing sections and factions; so Abolitionists, Conservatives, and the Blair family found representation in the Cabinet of Abraham Lincoln.

The President was deeply serious throughout, and there was probably never a clearer exposition of motive and character made than was then presented by him. His Cabinet seemed to have been selected with more impersonal consideration than was possible to most men. He rose from his seat and took from some pigeon-holes near him all the correspondence which had passed between him and Mr. Chase, and read to the committee, commenting as he went on. He recounted the many times "Governor Chase" had tendered resignation, and the irritation that had grown out of these repetitions, laying special stress upon the last of them.

John J. Cisco had resigned the office of Assistant Treasurer at New York; the place had been offered