cannot go through Massachusetts and recruit men to bombard Charleston or New Orleans. . . We are in no condition to fight. . . . Nothing but madness can provoke war with the Gulf States;' with much more to the same effect.

If the veterans of the old anti-slavery contest were in this frame of mind in April, Lincoln could hardly place much dependence upon the people at large in March. If he could not "recruit men in Massachusetts, in what State could he reasonably expect to do so? Against such discouragement it can only be said that he had a singular instinct for the underlying popular feeling, that he could scent it in the distance and in hiding; moreover, that he was always willing to run the chance of any consequences which might follow the performance of a clear duty. Still, as he looked over the dreary Northern field in those chill days of early March, he must have had a marvellous sensitiveness in order to perceive the generative heat and force in the depths beneath the cheerless surface and awaiting only the fulness of the near spring season to burst forth in sudden universal vigor. Yet such was his knowledge and such his faith concerning the people that we may fancy, if we will, that he foresaw the great transformation. But there were still other matters which disturbed him. Before his inauguration, he had heard much of his coming official isolation. One of the arguments reiterated alike by Southern Unionists and by Northerners had been that the Republican

President would be powerless, because the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court were all opposed to him. But the supposed lack of political sympathy on the part of these bodies, however it might beget anxiety for the future, was for the present of much less moment than another fact, viz., that none of the distinguished men, leaders in his own party, whom Lincoln found about him at Washington, were in a frame of mind to assist him efficiently. If all did not actually distrust his capacity and character, — which, doubtless, many honestly did, at least they were profoundly ignorant concerning both. Therefore they could not yet, and did not, place genuine, implicit confidence in him; they could not yet, and did not, advise and aid him at all in the same spirit and with the same usefulness as later they were able to do. They were not to blame for this; on the contrary, the condition had been brought about distinctly against their will, since certainly few of them had looked with favor upon the selection of an unknown, inexperienced, ill-educated man as the Republican candidate for the presidency. How much Lincoln felt his loneliness will never be known; for, reticent and self-contained at all times, he gave no outward sign. That he felt it less than other men would have done may be regarded as certain; for, as has already appeared to some extent, and as will appear much more in this narrative, he was singularly self-reliant, and, at least in appearance, was strangely indifferent to any counsel or support

which could be brought to him by others. Yet, marked as was this trait in him, he could hardly have been human had he not felt oppressed by the personal solitude and political isolation of his position when the responsibility of his great office rested newly upon him. Under all these circumstances, if this lonely man moved slowly and cautiously during the early weeks of his administration, it was not at his door that the people had the right to lay the reproach of weakness or hesitation.

Mr. Buchanan, for the convenience of his successor, had called an extra session of the Senate, and on March 5 President Lincoln sent in the nominations for his Cabinet. All were immediately confirmed, as follows:

William H. Seward, New York, Secretary of State. Salmon P. Chase, Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury. Simon Cameron, Pennsylvania, Secretary of War. Gideon Welles, Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy. Caleb B. Smith, Indiana, Secretary of the Interior. Edward Bates, Missouri, Attorney-General. Montgomery Blair, Maryland, Postmaster-General.

It is matter of course that a Cabinet slate should fail to give general satisfaction; and this one encountered fully the average measure of criticism. The body certainly was somewhat heterogeneous in its composition, yet the same was true of the Republican party which it represented. Nor was it by any means so heterogeneous as Mr. Lincoln had designed to have it, for he had made efforts. to place in it a Southern spokesman for Southern

views; and he had not desisted from the purpose until its futility was made apparent by the direct refusal of Mr. Gilmer of North Carolina, and by indications of a like unwillingness on the part of one or two other Southerners who were distantly sounded on the subject. Seward, Chase, Bates and Cameron were the four men who had manifested the greatest popularity, after Lincoln, in the national convention, and the selection of them, therefore, showed that Mr. Lincoln was seeking strength rather than amity in his Cabinet; for it was certainly true that each one of them had a following which was far from being wholly in sympathy with the following of any one of the others. The President evidently believed that it was of more importance that each great body of Northern men should feel that its opinions were fairly presented, than that his Cabinet officers should always comfortably unite in looking at questions from one and the same point of view. Judge Davis says that Lincoln's original design was to appoint Democrats and Republicans alike to office. He carried this theory so far that the radical Republicans regarded the make-up of the Cabinet as a "disgraceful surrender to the South;" while men of less extreme views saw with some alarm that he had called to his advisory council four ex-Democrats and only three ex-Whigs, a criticism which he met by saying that he himself was an "old-line Whig" and should be there to make the parties even. On the other hand, the Republicans of the

middle line of States grumbled much at the selection of Bates and Blair as representatives of their section.

The Cabinet had not been brought together without some jarring and friction, especially in the case of Cameron. On December 31 Mr. Lincoln intimated to him that he should have either the Treasury or the War Department, but on January 3 requested him to "decline the appointment." Cameron, however, had already mentioned the matter to many friends, without any suggestion that he should not be glad to accept either position, and therefore, even if he were willing to accede to the sudden, strange, and unexplained request of Mr. Lincoln, he would have found it difficult to do so without giving rise to much embarrassing gossip. Accordingly he did not decline, and thereupon ensued much wire-pulling. Pennsylvania protectionists wanted Cameron in the Treasury, and strenuously objected to Chase as an ex-Democrat of free-trade proclivities. On the other hand, Lincoln gradually hardened into the resolution that Chase should have the Treasury. He made the tender, and it was accepted. He then offered consolation to Pennsylvania by giving the War portfolio to Cameron, which was accepted with something of chagrin. How far this Cameron episode was affected by the bargain declared by Lamon to have been made at Chicago cannot be told. Other biographers ignore this story, but I do not see how the direct testimony furnished by