sented in a memorandum, with similar ones from other members of the Cabinet, at the request of the President, in March, and reads as follows:

"If war is to be the consequence of an attempt to provision Fort Sumter, war will just as certainly result from the attempt to maintain possession of Fort Pickens.

"I am clearly in favor of maintaining Fort Pickens and just as clearly in favor of provisioning Fort Sumter. If that attempt should be resisted by military force, Fort Sumter should, in my judgment, be reinforced.

"If war is to be the result, I perceive no reason why it may not be best begun by military resistance to the efforts of the administration to sustain troops of the Union, stationed under the authority of the government, in a fort of the Union, in the ordinary course of service."

In the beginning Mr. Chase was a very strong supporter of General McClellan and frequently called the attention of the latter to his obligations to him. "The country was indebted to me," he wrote McClellan, "in some considerable degree for the change of your commission from Ohio into a commission of major-general of the army of the Union;" and he wrote a friend the good news," McClellan is Commander-in-Chief! let us thank God and take courage!" but this was his habit. He invariably worshipped the rising sun, and was usually one of the first to turn his back upon old friends when they met with misfortunes. He usually cultivated the closest relations with those generals who had grievances against the administration. His correspondence and his diary, as published by his chosen biographer, are full of caustic and unkind criticisms of his chief. received many letters containing violent abuse of the President and his colleagues in the government, and neither defended them nor rebuked the writers. He records in his diary a conversation with an officer who, meeting him, the Secretary of the Treasury, for the first time, was rude enough to utter a gross insult directed

He

GENERAL GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN AT THE HEAD-QUARTERS OF GENERAL MORELL'S BRIGADE, MINOR'S HILL, VIRGINIA

From a photograph by M. B. Brady

at the President. In his comments Mr. Chase seems to approve the remarks, and describes the President's assailant as "well read and extremely intelligent." But Mr. Chase never defended his colleagues when they were attacked. In reply to a violent criticism from an enemy of the administration, he wrote, "I am not responsible for the management of the war and have no voice in it, except that I am not forbidden to make suggestions, and do so now and then when I can't help it."

He soon lost his confidence in and admiration for McClellan, however, and in his criticisms concerning his dilatory tactics was the most bitter of all the Cabinet. He once drew up a paper, which he induced several of his colleagues to sign, demanding McClellan's removal. He continually offered advice and suggestions, and when they were not accepted he usually took the trouble to record his resentment in his diary or to express it in vigorous terms in a letter to some friend.

Chase was in favor of the unconditional emancipation of the slaves, and when the President laid before the Cabinet the Emancipation Proclamation he writes in his diary, "I said that I should give to such a measure my cordial support, but I should prefer that no expression on the subject of compensation should be made, and I thought that the measure of emancipation could be better and more quickly accomplished by allowing generals to organize and arm the slaves and by directing the commanders of departments to proclaim emancipation within their districts as soon as practicable. But I regarded this as so much better than inaction on the subject that I could give it my entire support."

The President was not unaware of the disposition of Mr. Seward to criticise himself and the members of his Cabinet, but placed so high a value upon his ability and his importance to the government that he treated him with the same patience that he did Mr. Stanton and others who were critical and petulant concerning his

deliberation and other peculiarities. The extent to which this forbearance was exercised may be illustrated by a note addressed to the President by his Secretary of the Treasury, April 25, 1861, in which the latter was guilty of such bad taste and impertinence that Lincoln would have been justified in asking his instant resignation. Mr. Chase held the President practically responsible for the demoralized condition of affairs in the country and for all that had happened before his inauguration as well as since, and said, "Let me beg of you to remember that the disunionists have anticipated us in everything, and that as yet we have accomplished nothing but the destruction of our own property. Let me beg of you to remember also that it has been a darling object with the disunionists to secure the passage of a secession ordinance by Maryland. . . . Save us from this new humiliation. You alone can give the word."

Mr. Chase was in consultation with the President daily, he had been consulted about every situation and movement, he was quite as familiar with what had been done and what was intended as the President himself, and the reasons which prompted him to address his chief in such a manner can only be conjectured. It is believed that he was prompted to do so by one of the many hostile critics of the administration, and wrote the letter without realizing its tone and impertinence. But Lincoln received it with his usual complacency, made no complaint to any one about it, and calmly filed it away among his other correspondence.

Like Mr. Seward, he went into the Cabinet with the opinion that the President was incapable and inexperienced, and that it was his duty to support and assist him in the management of the government; but, unlike Mr. Seward, he was never able to rid himself of a sense of his own superiority. He had an honest conviction that he was more competent and would make a much better President himself, and that if his advice were