Secretary of War were, and ought to be, nothing more than a clerk to the general commanding.

But Stanton neither "usurped" nor "assumed" the functions of general-in-chief. McClellan was acknowledged to be a failure; the nation was disgusted and clamorous; Chase was complaining that he could "grind out no more money" without the backing of military success or activity; there was bitter jealousy among the leading generals, not one of whom was conspicuous above his fellows, and something had to be done. One secretary favored promoting this and another that general. Stanton suggested, "Let a leader develop." Lincoln said: "Let us make the Secretary of War generalin-chief," and every member of the cabinet instantly voted in favor of the happy and lawful proposition.

Stanton accepted the responsibility and showed both his wisdom and forbearance by advising against appointing a new general-in-chief, for a time, in order to "avoid offending or humiliating McClellan" and to hold the place open for him should he "win a victory, or so conduct the army as to be entitled to reinstatement." Thus, while McClellan's partisans were denouncing and be-lying Stanton, Stanton was trying to save their idol-should he prove worth saving.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE FAMOUS "MORNING HOUR."

In order to have the remainder of the day free from interrupttions, Stanton arranged to give an hour every morning to the "public." This morning hour is remembered more vividly by the masses than any other feature of his incumbency, and showed quite as well as any his enormous capacity for adaptation, organization, comprehension, and despatch. No preparation for taking care of the heterogeneous business that was to be considered could be made, for no one knew what was coming.

Standing on a small platform near a high desk at one end of the large reception room, with a messenger to deliver papers, he separated the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares, with a decisiveness and rapidity that was marvelous. Contractors, claimants, sick, wounded, cranks, chaplains, crooks, kickers, spies, politicians, constitution-savers, office-seekers, Cyprians after passes, sorrowing widows, broken-hearted fathers, convicts, deserters, dismissed or suspended officers-everybody came cocked and primed for a bout with the Secretary-and got it.

"Of all his duties, those of the reception room were the most. annoying and distasteful," says Major A. E. H. Johnson, his confidential clerk. "Here he brought upon himself much censure and enmity for his abruptness, his swift decisions, and his firmness. But with him the success of his armies overshadowed everything else; that was all he was working for." Major Johnson continues:

At the time President Lincoln was dissatisfied with the failure of Meade to pursue and fight Lee, as he should have done after the battle of Gettysburg, an incident occurred which sent a thrill of astonishment through the building. A Western man with a note from the President proposed that the Secretary consider replacing the Army of the Potomac with the Army of the West. Stanton blurted out that if the President made that recommendation, he was a fool,* which settled the Westerner-he took his papers and left.

*When, an hour later, the Westerner repeated Stanton's remark to

"Sunset" Cox was the only person who ever kept his hat on in the reception room, and I always thought it was because he was afraid to encounter Mr. Stanton except under preparation for immediate retreat.

While Senator Trumbull of Chicago was presenting some matter to the Secretary, the two became greatly excited and by some accidental movement Mr. Stanton knocked the ink-stand off the high table and spilled the black fluid all about. On returning to his room he at once sent a note of apology, but the senator never forgave him, and, at the impeachment trial of President Johnson, got even by turning against his party and his State and voting for Johnson, which, of course, was voting against Mr. Stanton. Often when Mr. Stanton came from the reception room, he washed his face and perfumed his flowing whiskers with cologne in order to get rid of the remains of some offensive breath he had encountered.

On one occasion he came from the reception room with his nose bleeding and sent me to bring Surgeon-General Barnes. He was somewhat alarmed at the free flow of blood, but General Barnes soon stopped it by cracked ice, and he went on as before.

At one particular reception Stanton espied a soldier-boy, ragged, dirty, and evidently in ill health, leaning against the wall as if too feeble to stand alone. Regardless of the officers crowded about him, he called the boy to him saying: "Well, my lad, what can I do for you?"

The soldier, without a word, drew a letter and handed it to the Secretary. Hastily reading it, Stanton cried: "I would rather be worthy of this letter than have the highest commission in the army of the United States," and then read aloud the communication, which was an appeal from General George H. Thomas in behalf of the bearer and survivor of the men sent South by General O. M. Mitchell to burn the bridges and destroy the railway communications of the Confederates before the battle of Shiloh. The youth's companions had been caught and hanged and he escaped more dead than alive. Reaching the Union lines, nearly a year elapsed before he was able to leave the hospital, and General Thomas urged that he be rewarded. Again turning to the boy Stanton asked, with considerable emotion in his voice, what he wanted.

"Let me go home."

"You shall go home, and when you return to the army it shall be as an officer. This is the sort of devotion that is needed in the service."

Lincoln, he received this characteristic reply: "If Mr. Stanton said the President is a fool, it must be so, for the Secretary is generally right."

In the spring of 1862, when the Fourth Wisconsin embarked from Newport News to join General Butler at New Orleans, Corporal Nathan Cole was left behind to die, as was supposed, of typhoid pneumonia. A telegram to that effect was sent to his father, Charles D. Cole, at Sheboygan Falls. The aged and stricken parent took the first train for Washington, not even waiting to change his suit. Although at that time all passes had been forbidden except to persons engaged in the military service, he joined the throng gathered to see the Secretary of War, for there was no alternative but to apply for a pass. Weary, depressed, and almost hopeless, especially when he observed Stanton tossing off his visitors with the energy of a cyclone, he waited his turn. As it was about to come, a stylishly dressed contractor pushed him aside and stepped into his place in the advancing line.

"Very well, sir; go ahead, if your business is more important than mine," said Mr. Cole, who was small and lame.

"Stand aside, there!" shouted Stanton to the contractor, and then, changing as quick as a flash to kindness and consideration, leaned over, extending his hand, and inquired of the white-haired father: "What can I do for you, sir?"

In a few trembling words the old gentleman made known the object of his long journey and began to search his pockets nervously for letters from Senator T. O. Howe and Governor Edward Salomon. Before he could find them Stanton grasped a large envelope and wrote the following, which he held forth while attending to the succeeding visitor: "Pass Charles D. Cole, a citizen of Wisconsin, to Newport News, Virginia, to visit his son, a soldier sick in the hospital there. All officers and soldiers of the United States will show Mr. Cole due courtesy and attention."

The stylish but hoggish contractor, as a penalty for his unjust conduct, was not permitted to state his business until Stanton had attended to every other person in the assemblage.

Young Cole recovered and in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, his home, no one can speak with impunity against Secretary Stanton.

During 1862, William Stanton Buchanan went to Washington to procure a contract for his townsman James Phillips of Wheeling, to cast ball and shell. "I went," he relates, "to the Secretary's house. In the evening, when Mr. Stanton came home, I thought I would further my business by mentioning a few points in regard to it. He replied: 'William, no talk on business here. I'll hear