that at the time this opinion was expressed it was assumed that the other departments would be conducted as ably as the Department of State, and not mismanaged by zealots. Such was the first froth of revolution. There were frequent rumors of changes in the Cabinet. After the settlement of the Trent affair Seward's fortunes rose with amazing suddenness; and the heavy pendulum of vituperation swung to the other side. Nearly every one admitted that the credit of averting war belonged chiefly to Seward, and his special friends called the radicals to mark the result in matters over which he had actual control. Behold the difference, they said, between victories in diplomacy and defeats in the field. This ought to have sufficed, but it did not. They demanded that Seward should be given as great influence in the administration as the radicals had accused him of exerting, for the conservatives believed that his abilities and the state of public affairs warranted it. Even the great and wellbalanced lawyer, William M. Evarts, wrote to the Secretary of State, January 2, 1862:

"Your position seemed to me not less difficult than imposing. A chafing people, a Congress filled with malcontents and empty of leaders, a Cabinet with disturbed plans and purposes, and long-accustomed freedom from any sharply critical situations in our foreign affairs, were hard

to handle at home. .

"I hope you will feel strong enough to attempt what I am sure your friends feel as important to the completeness of your fame in the history of the Great Rebellion' some Clarendon is to write, as to the dearest interests of the country-the formation of a public-spirited Cabinet, framed to the issues that have come in since the election. The whole country is longing for this."1

A few weeks later the same friend wrote again: "There is a general expectation here that Secretary Welles

1 Seward MSS.

will leave the Cabinet, and that his place will be filled from New England"; and then he suggested that Richard Henry Dana, of Boston, be appointed, for "his general public ability, high character, and intrepid courage would make him a most valuable colleague to yourself in the Cabinet." It was a repetition of a frequent oversight: men forgot that Lincoln, not Seward nor Chase, was President. Cameron alone went out, in January, 1862, and that was because he was enveloped in a cloud of corruption.

2

1

Seward's aversion to a strictly antislavery policy was continually a pretext for attacks. The radicals recalled his words in the winter of 1860-61; and when the volume of diplomatic correspondence for 1861 was published, near the end of that year, they found the despatches to Dayton and to Adams saying that no moral principles were to be brought into discussion before foreign governments, and that the condition of slavery would remain just the same whether the revolution should succeed or fail. From the same store-house they took his declaration that "Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state." And all were used as cutting weapons. This was the man, they said, whose friends asserted that he was the virtual head of the administration; and, they added, if the claim was warranted it explained why no moral questions had come into the conflict, and why there had been so little subjugation of the disaffected. It was a specious but potent method of damaging an inconsistent yet zealous patriot. Notwithstanding the spring-flood of antislavery activity that began in the winter of 1861-62, Lincoln, as has been seen, could be induced to go only a little beyond what

1 February 3, 1862. Seward MSS.

2 See ante, pp. 162, 357. An editorial article in the New York Tribune of December 18, 1861, criticised Seward for this.

was known to be Seward's opinions at that time. Therefore, the emancipationists vented their anger upon the Secretary of State, and endeavored to make him shoulder the responsibility for every reverse in the field.

Seward's offences were much less serious than they were represented to be. What he had said about coercion was written even before the attempt to relieve Fort Sumter, which was avowedly not an effort to subjugate South Carolina, but merely a military declaration of a right to supply and hold that particular fort. Although the prophecy about slavery was made a few days later, it was written three months before Congress passed the Crittenden resolution, which contained Seward's idea, and was an official announcement of the national policy. He undoubtedly did believe that the contest itself would not immediately destroy slavery, for, like a great many others, he fully expected that the next campaign would see the beginning of the end of hostilities, if not the end itself. If Confederate disintegration had dated from the early spring of 1862, it would then, considering all the circumstances, have been entirely unnecessary and unstatesmanlike, if not positively injurious, to attack slavery directly.

As soon as McClellan's reverses before Richmond began, the severe criticisms on Seward increased in number and virulence, and efforts were made "to sow the seeds of disunion" in the relations between the Secretary of State and his colleagues.' His services in the North in connection with the call for troops did not appease his enemies. In July it was said that he was to leave the Cabinet. When it was seen that he could not be displaced by means of disconnected attacks, his en

1 3 Seward, 98.

2 Robert D. Pine wrote, July 25, 1862: “I sincerely hope that there is no foundation for the reported rumor here of your resigning your station at the helm."-Seward MSS.

emies began to organize. Early in September a committee from New York, claiming to represent hostile sentiment in that state, and especially the opinions of the five New England governors, came to Washington to “insist on the resignation of Messrs. S[eward] and B[lair?]." In the same paragraph in which Chase recorded this fact he said that he

"had never known Mr. Seward to object to any action, however vigorous, of a military nature, though his influence had been cast in favor of harmonizing the various elements of support to the administration, by retaining General McClellan in command, and by avoiding action which would be likely to alienate the border states. I added that in his wishes of harmony I concurred; and that I credited him with good motives in the choice of means to ends, though I could not always concur with him in judgment as to their adaptation."1

The presumption and personal motives of the committee provoked Lincoln to say: "It is plain enough what you want you want to get Seward out of the Cabinet. There is not one of you who would not see the country ruined if you could turn out Seward." Bryant wrote to a friend, September 15th: "Some of our best and most eminent men have visited Washington to remonstrate with him [Lincoln, about his inactivity in military and antislavery matters], but with only partial effect. The influence of Seward is always at work, and counteracts the good impressions made in the interviews with men of a different class." It was probably within a few weeks of this time that Joseph Medill said in an undated letter to Schuyler Colfax:

"McClellan in the field and Seward in the Cabinet have been the evil spirits that have brought our grand cause to the very brink of death. Seward must be got out of the Cabinet. He is Lincoln's evil genius. He has been Presi2 Warden's Chase, 468. 32 Godwin's Bryant, 178.

1 Warden's Chase, 467.

dent de facto, and has kept a sponge saturated with chloroform to Uncle Abe's nose all the while, except one or two brief spells.". . .'

So much for the opposition to Seward in the summer and autumn of 1862.

It should not be inferred that the conservatives had no reproaches for their enemies. It was Seward's misfortune rather than his fault that many Democrats and Democratic newspapers that had formerly been counted as prosouthern had come to be his stanch allies, and he was too often blamed for their opinions. The New York Herald belonged to this class, and, of course, violently assailed the radicals, just as in former years it had assailed Seward himself. On July 9, 1862, it called for "the removal of the imbeciles from the Navy and War Departments"; and, about this time, it very frequently spoke of the "abolition traitors." On November 28th it alleged that the movement against Seward was led by Wendell Phillips, who had called for a radical change of men and measures; that the preliminary proclamation of emancipation was the beginning of the change in measures; and that the dismissal of McClellan was the first step in a movement to get rid of Seward, Bates, and Blair. It expressed the opinion that Seward was "the only member of the Cabinet who has done his work thoroughly, efficiently, and successfully." On December 18th it declared that the Tribune and the radicals were responsible for the result at Fredericksburg. The New York Times, too, called for a new Cabinet, ready to adopt a policy of energy, of stronger, broader, and more persevering statesmanship, instead of what was regarded as unsteady and shifting. Everybody understood this as equivalent to a demand that Seward's ideas should be given supremacy.

1 Hollister's Colfax, 200.

2

2 Times, September 15, 1862.