his step from its beginning. The fateful times in which he acted the foremost part were larger than any of the men who lived in them, tall and commanding as is the figure of the benign war President, and the events then moving over the dial of history were grander than the statesmen or soldiers who touched the springs that made them move. was a day of elemental stir, and the ground is still quaking beneath our feet, under the throes and convulsions of that great social and political change which was first definitely foreshadowed to the world by the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.

JAMES C. WELLING.

It

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

He had declared the puradministration to be the The Democratic Party

great issue before them. 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