ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET.
Daily intercourse with Lincoln--The great civil leaders of the
period--Seward and Chase--Gideon Welles--Friction between Stanton
and Blair--Personal traits of the President--Lincoln's surpassing
ability as a politician--His true greatness of character and
intellect--His genius for military judgment--Stanton's comment on
the Gettysburg speech--The kindness of Abraham Lincoln's heart.
During the first winter I spent in Washington in the War Department I
had constant opportunities of seeing Mr. Lincoln, and of conversing with
him in the cordial and unofficial manner which he always preferred. Not
that there was ever any lack of dignity in the man. Even in his freest
moments one always felt the presence of a will and of an intellectual
power which maintained the ascendancy of his position. He never posed,
or put on airs, or attempted to make any particular impression; but he
was always conscious of his own ideas and purposes, even in his most
unreserved moments.
I knew, too, and saw frequently, all the members of his Cabinet. When
Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated as President, his first act was to name his
Cabinet; and it was a common remark at the time that he had put into it
every man who had competed with him for the nomination. The first in
importance was William H. Seward, of New York, Mr. Lincoln's most
prominent competitor. Mr. Seward was made Secretary of State. He was an
interesting man, of an optimistic temperament, and he probably had the
most cultivated and comprehensive intellect in the administration. He
was a man who was all his life in controversies, yet he was singular in
this, that, though forever in fights, he had almost no personal enemies.
Seward had great ability as a writer, and he had what is very rare in a
lawyer, a politician, or a statesman--imagination. A fine illustration
of his genius was the acquisition of Alaska. That was one of the last
things that he did before he went out of office, and it demonstrated
more than anything else his fixed and never-changing idea that all North
America should be united under one government.
Mr. Seward was an admirable writer and an impressive though entirely
unpretentious speaker. He stood up and talked as though he were engaged
in conversation, and the effect was always great. It gave the impression
of a man deliberating "out loud" with himself.
The second man in importance and ability to be put into the Cabinet was
Mr. Chase, of Ohio. He was an able, noble, spotless statesman, a man who
would have been worthy of the best days of the old Roman republic. He
had been a candidate for the presidency, though a less conspicuous one
than Seward. Mr. Chase was a portly man; tall, and of an impressive
appearance, with a very handsome, large head. He was genial, though very
decided, and occasionally he would criticise the President, a thing I
never heard Mr. Seward do. Chase had been successful in Ohio politics,
and in the Treasury Department his administration was satisfactory to
the public. He was the author of the national banking law. I remember
going to dine with him one day--I did that pretty often, as I had known
him well when I was on the Tribune--and he said to me: "I have completed
to-day a very great thing. I have finished the National Bank Act. It
will be a blessing to the country long after I am dead."
The Secretary of the Navy throughout the war was Gideon Welles, of
Connecticut. Welles was a curious-looking man: he wore a wig which was
parted in the middle, the hair falling down on each side; and it was
from his peculiar appearance, I have always thought, that the idea that
he was an old fogy originated. I remember Governor Andrew, of
Massachusetts, coming into my office at the War Department one day and
asking where he could find "that old Mormon deacon, the Secretary of the
Navy." In spite of his peculiarities, I think Mr. Welles was a very
wise, strong man. There was nothing decorative about him; there was no
noise in the street when he went along; but he understood his duty, and
did it efficiently, continually, and unvaryingly. There was a good deal
of opposition to him, for we had no navy when the war began, and he had
to create one without much deliberation; but he was patient, laborious,
and intelligent at his task.
Montgomery Blair was Postmaster-General in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet. He was
a capable man, sharp, keen, perhaps a little cranky, and not friendly
with everybody; but I always found him pleasant to deal with, and I saw
a great deal of him. He and Mr. Stanton were not very good friends, and
when he wanted anything in the War Department he was more likely to come
to an old friend like me than to go to the Secretary. Stanton, too,
rather preferred that.
The Attorney-General of the Cabinet was Edward Bates, of Missouri. Bates
had been Mr. Greeley's favorite candidate for the presidency. He was put
into the Cabinet partly, I suppose, because his reputation was good as a
lawyer, but principally because he had been advocated for President by
such powerful influences. Bates must have been about sixty-eight years
old when he was appointed Attorney-General. He was a very eloquent
speaker. Give him a patriotic subject, where his feelings could expand,
and he would make a beautiful speech. He was a man of very gentle,
cordial nature, but not one of extraordinary brilliancy.
The relations between Mr. Lincoln and the members of his Cabinet were
always friendly and sincere on his part. He treated every one of them
with unvarying candor, respect, and kindness; but, though several of
them were men of extraordinary force and self-assertion--this was true
especially of Mr. Seward, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Stanton--and though there
was nothing of self-hood or domination in his manner toward them, it was
always plain that he was the master and they the subordinates. They
constantly had to yield to his will in questions where responsibility
fell upon him. If he ever yielded to theirs, it was because they
convinced him that the course they advised was judicious and
appropriate. I fancied during the whole time of my intimate intercourse
with him and with them that he was always prepared to receive the
resignation of any one of them. At the same time I do not recollect a
single occasion when any member of the Cabinet had got his mind ready to
quit his post from any feeling of dissatisfaction with the policy or
conduct of the President. Not that they were always satisfied with his
actions; the members of the Cabinet, like human beings in general, were
not pleased with everything. In their judgment much was imperfect in the
administration; much, they felt, would have been done better if their
views had been adopted and they individually had had charge of it. Not
so with the President. He was calm, equable, uncomplaining. In the
discussion of important questions, whatever he said showed the
profoundest thought, even when he was joking. He seemed to see every
side of every question. He never was impatient, he never was in a hurry,
and he never tried to hurry anybody else. To every one he was pleasant
and cordial. Yet they all felt it was his word that went at last; that
every case was open until he gave his decision.
This impression of authority, of reserve force, Mr. Lincoln always gave
to those about him. Even physically he was impressive. According to the
record measurements, he was six feet four inches in height. That is, he
was at least four inches taller than the tall, ordinary man. When he
rode out on horseback to review an army, as I have frequently seen him
do, he wore usually a high hat, and then he looked like a giant. There
was no waste or excess of material about his frame; nevertheless, he was
very strong and muscular. I remember that the last time I went to see
him at the White House--the afternoon before he was killed--I found him
in a side room with coat off and sleeves rolled up, washing his hands.
He had finished his work for the day, and was going away. I noticed then
the thinness of his arms, and how well developed, strong, and active his
muscles seemed to be. In fact, there was nothing flabby or feeble about
Mr. Lincoln physically. He was a very quick man in his movements when he
chose to be, and he had immense physical endurance. Night after night he
would work late and hard without being wilted by it, and he always
seemed as ready for the next day's work as though he had done nothing
the day before.
Mr. Lincoln's face was thin, and his features were large. His hair was
black, his eyebrows heavy, his forehead square and well developed. His
complexion was dark and quite sallow. His smile was something most
lovely. I have never seen a woman's smile that approached it in its
engaging quality; nor have I ever seen another face which would light up
as Mr. Lincoln's did when something touched his heart or amused him. I
have heard it said that he was ungainly, that his step was awkward. He
never impressed me as being awkward. In the first place, there was such
a charm and beauty about his expression, such good humor and friendly
spirit looking from his eyes, that when you were near him you never
thought whether he was awkward or graceful; you thought of nothing
except, What a kindly character this man has! Then, too, there was such
shrewdness in his kindly features that one did not care to criticise
him. His manner was always dignified, and even if he had done an
awkward thing the dignity of his character and manner would have made it
seem graceful and becoming.
The great quality of his appearance was benevolence and benignity: the
wish to do somebody some good if he could; and yet there was no flabby
philanthropy about Abraham Lincoln. He was all solid, hard, keen
intelligence combined with goodness. Indeed, the expression of his face
and of his bearing which impressed one most, after his benevolence and
benignity, was his intelligent understanding. You felt that here was a
man who saw through things, who understood, and you respected him
accordingly.
Lincoln was a supreme politician. He understood politics because he
understood human nature. I had an illustration of this in the spring of
1864. The administration had decided that the Constitution of the United
States should be amended so that slavery should be prohibited. This was
not only a change in our national policy, it was also a most important
military measure. It was intended not merely as a means of abolishing
slavery forever, but as a means of affecting the judgment and the
feelings and the anticipations of those in rebellion. It was believed
that such an amendment to the Constitution would be equivalent to new
armies in the field, that it would be worth at least a million men, that
it would be an intellectual army that would tend to paralyze the enemy
and break the continuity of his ideas.
In order thus to amend the Constitution, it was necessary first to have
the proposed amendment approved by three fourths of the States. When
that question came to be considered, the issue was seen to be so close
that one State more was necessary. The State of Nevada was organized and
admitted into the Union to answer that purpose. I have sometimes heard
people complain of Nevada as superfluous and petty, not big enough to be
a State; but when I hear that complaint, I always hear Abraham Lincoln
saying, "It is easier to admit Nevada than to raise another million of
soldiers."
In March, 1864, the question of allowing Nevada to form a State
government finally came up in the House of Representatives. There was
strong opposition to it. For a long time beforehand the question had
been canvassed anxiously. At last, late one afternoon, the President
came into my office, in the third story of the War Department. He used
to come there sometimes rather than send for me, because he was fond of
walking and liked to get away from the crowds in the White House. He
came in and shut the door.
"Dana," he said, "I am very anxious about this vote. It has got to be
taken next week. The time is very short. It is going to be a great deal
closer than I wish it was."
"There are plenty of Democrats who will vote for it," I replied. "There
is James E. English, of Connecticut; I think he is sure, isn't he?"
"Oh, yes; he is sure on the merits of the question."
"Then," said I, "there's 'Sunset' Cox, of Ohio. How is he?"
"He is sure and fearless. But there are some others that I am not clear
about. There are three that you can deal with better than anybody else,
perhaps, as you know them all. I wish you would send for them."
He told me who they were; it isn't necessary to repeat the names here.
One man was from New Jersey and two from New York.
"What will they be likely to want?" I asked.
"I don't know," said the President; "I don't know. It makes no
difference, though, what they want. Here is the alternative: that we
carry this vote, or be compelled to raise another million, and I don't
know how many more, men, and fight no one knows how long. It is a
question of three votes or new armies."
"Well, sir," said I, "what shall I say to these gentlemen?"
"I don't know," said he; "but whatever promise you make to them I will
perform."
I sent for the men and saw them one by one. I found that they were
afraid of their party. They said that some fellows in the party would be
down on them. Two of them wanted internal revenue collector's
appointments. "You shall have it," I said. Another one wanted a very
important appointment about the custom house of New York. I knew the man
well whom he wanted to have appointed. He was a Republican, though the
congressman was a Democrat. I had served with him in the Republican
county committee of New York. The office was worth perhaps twenty
thousand dollars a year. When the congressman stated the case, I asked
him, "Do you want that?"
"Yes," said he.
"Well," I answered, "you shall have it."
"I understand, of course," said he, "that you are not saying this on
your own authority?"
"Oh, no," said I; "I am saying it on the authority of the President."
Well, these men voted that Nevada be allowed to form a State government,
and thus they helped secure the vote which was required. The next
October the President signed the proclamation admitting the State. In
the February following Nevada was one of the States which ratified the
Thirteenth Amendment, by which slavery was abolished by constitutional
prohibition in all of the United States. I have always felt that this
little piece of side politics was one of the most judicious, humane, and
wise uses of executive authority that I have ever assisted in or
witnessed.
The appointment in the New York Custom House was to wait until the term
of the actual incumbent had run out. My friend, the Democratic
congressman, was quite willing. "That's all right," he said; "I am in no
hurry." Before the time had expired, Mr. Lincoln was murdered and Andrew
Johnson became President. I was in the West, when one day I got a
telegram from Roscoe Conkling:
"Come to Washington." So I went.
"I want you to go and see President Johnson," Mr. Conkling said, "and
tell him that the appointment of this man to the custom house is a
sacred promise of Mr. Lincoln's, and that it must be kept."
Then I went to the White House, and saw President Johnson.
"This is Mr. Lincoln's promise," I urged. "He regarded it as saving the
necessity of another call for troops and raising, perhaps, a million
more men to continue the war. I trust, Mr. President, that you will see
your way clear to execute this promise."
"Well, Mr. Dana," he replied, "I don't say that I won't; but I have
observed in the course of my experience that such bargains tend to
immorality."
The appointment was not made. I am happy to say, however, that the
gentleman to whom the promise was given never found any fault either
with President Lincoln or with the Assistant Secretary who had been the
means of making the promise to him.
One of the cleverest minor political moves which Mr. Lincoln ever made
was an appointment he once gave Horace Greeley. Mr. Greeley never
approved of Mr. Lincoln's manner of conducting the war, and he sometimes
abused the President roundly for his deliberation. As the war went on,
Greeley grew more and more irritable, because the administration did not
make peace on some terms. Finally, in July, 1864, he received a letter
from a pretended agent of the Confederate authorities in Canada, saying:
I am authorized to state to you for our use only, not the public,
that two ambassadors of Davis and Company are now in Canada with
full and complete powers for a peace, and Mr. Sanders requests that
you come on immediately to me at Cataract House to have a private
interview; or, if you will send the President's protection for him
and two friends, they will come on and meet you. He says the whole
matter can be consummated by me, them, and President Lincoln.
This letter was followed the next day by a telegram, saying: "Will you
come here? Parties have full power."
Upon receiving this letter, Mr. Greeley wrote to President Lincoln, more
or less in the strain of the articles that he had published in the
Tribune. He complained bitterly of the way the business of the
Government was managed in the great crisis, and told the President that
now there was a way open to peace. He explained that the Confederates
wanted a conference, and he told Mr. Lincoln that he thought that he
ought to appoint an ambassador, or a diplomatic agent, of the United
States Government, to meet the Confederate agents at Niagara and hear
what they had to say. Mr. Lincoln immediately responded by asking Mr.
Greeley to be himself the representative and to go to Niagara Falls.
"If you can find any person anywhere," the President wrote, "professing
to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, for peace,
embracing the restoration of the Union, and abandonment of slavery,
whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me with you, and
that if he really brings such proposition he shall at the least have
safe conduct with the paper (and without publicity, if he chooses) to
the point where you shall have met him. The same, if there be two or
more persons."
Mr. Greeley went to Niagara, but his mission ended in nothing, except
that the poor man, led astray by too great confidence, failed in his
undertaking, and was almost universally laughed at. I saw the President
not long after that, and he said, with a funny twinkle in his eye: "I
sent Brother Greeley a commission. I guess I am about even with him
now."
Lincoln had the most comprehensive, the most judicious mind; he was the
least faulty in his conclusions of any man I have ever known. He never
stepped too soon, and he never stepped too late. When the whole Northern
country seemed to be clamoring for him to issue a proclamation
abolishing slavery, he didn't do it. Deputation after deputation went to
Washington. I remember once a hundred gentlemen, dressed in black coats,
mostly clergymen, from Massachusetts, came to Washington to appeal to
him to proclaim the abolition of slavery. But he did not do it. He
allowed Mr. Cameron and General Butler to execute their great idea of
treating slaves as contraband of war and protecting those who had got
into our lines against being recaptured by their Southern owners; but he
would not prematurely make the proclamation that was so much desired.
Finally the time came, and of that he was the judge. Nobody else decided
it; nobody commanded it; the proclamation was issued as he thought best,
and it was efficacious. The people of the North, who during the long
contest over slavery had always stood strenuously by the compromises of
the Constitution, might themselves have become half rebels if this
proclamation had been issued too soon. At last they were tired of
waiting, tired of endeavoring to preserve even a show of regard for what
was called "the compromises of the Constitution" when they believed the
Constitution itself was in danger. Thus public opinion was ripe when
the proclamation came, and that was the beginning of the end. He could
have issued this proclamation two years before, perhaps, and the
consequence of it might have been our entire defeat; but when it came it
did its work, and it did us no harm whatever. Nobody protested against
it, not even the Confederates themselves.
This unerring judgment, this patience which waited and which knew when
the right time had arrived, is an intellectual quality that I do not
find exercised upon any such scale and with such absolute precision by
any other man in history. It proves Abraham Lincoln to have been
intellectually one of the greatest of rulers. If we look through the
record of great men, where is there one to be placed beside him? I do
not know.
Another interesting fact about Abraham Lincoln is that he developed into
a great military man; that is to say, a man of supreme military
judgment. I do not risk anything in saying that if one will study the
records of the war and study the writings relating to it, he will agree
with me that the greatest general we had, greater than Grant or Thomas,
was Abraham Lincoln. It was not so at the beginning; but after three or
four years of constant practice in the science and art of war, he
arrived at this extraordinary knowledge of it, so that Von Moltke was
not a better general, or an abler planner or expounder of a campaign,
than was President Lincoln. To sum it up, he was a born leader of men.
He knew human nature; he knew what chord to strike, and was never afraid
to strike it when he believed that the time had arrived.
Mr. Lincoln was not what is called an educated man. In the college that
he attended a man gets up at daylight to hoe corn, and sits up at night
by the side of a burning pine-knot to read the best book he can find.
What education he had, he had picked up. He had read a great many books,
and all the books that he had read he knew. He had a tenacious memory,
just as he had the ability to see the essential thing. He never took an
unimportant point and went off upon that; but he always laid hold of the
real question, and attended to that, giving no more thought to other
points than was indispensably necessary.
Thus, while we say that Mr. Lincoln was an uneducated man in the college
sense, he had a singularly perfect education in regard to everything
that concerns the practical affairs of life. His judgment was excellent,
and his information was always accurate. He knew what the thing was. He
was a man of genius, and contrasted with men of education the man of
genius will always carry the day. Many of his speeches illustrate this.
I remember very well Mr. Stanton's comment on the Gettysburg speeches of
Edward Everett and Mr. Lincoln. "Edward Everett has made a speech," he
said, "that will make three columns in the newspapers, and Mr. Lincoln
has made a speech of perhaps forty or fifty lines. Everett's is the
speech of a scholar, polished to the last possibility. It is elegant,
and it is learned; but Lincoln's speech will be read by a thousand men
where one reads Everett's, and will be remembered as long as anybody's
speeches are remembered who speaks in the English language."
That was the truth. Who ever thinks of or reads Everett's Gettysburg
speech now? If one will compare those two speeches he will get an idea
how superior genius is to education; how superior that intellectual
faculty is which sees the vitality of a question and knows how to state
it; how superior that intellectual faculty is which regards everything
with the fire of earnestness in the soul, with the relentless purpose of
a heart devoted to objects beyond literature.
Another remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's was that he seemed to
have no illusions. He had no freakish notions that things were so, or
might be so, when they were not so. All his thinking and reasoning, all
his mind, in short, was based continually upon actual facts, and upon
facts of which, as I said, he saw the essence. I never heard him say
anything that was not so. I never heard him foretell things; he told
what they were, but I never heard him intimate that such and such
consequences were likely to happen without the consequences following. I
should say, perhaps, that his greatest quality was wisdom. And that is
something superior to talent, superior to education. It is again genius;
I do not think it can be acquired. All the advice that he gave was wise,
and it was always timely. This wisdom, it is scarcely necessary to add,
had its animating philosophy in his own famous words, "With malice
toward none, with charity for all."
Another remarkable quality of Mr. Lincoln was his great mercifulness. A
thing it seemed as if he could not do was to sign a death warrant. One
day General Augur, who was the major general commanding the forces in
and around Washington, came to my office and said:
"Here is So-and-So, a spy. He has been tried by court-martial; the facts
are perfectly established, he has been sentenced to death, and here is
the warrant for his execution, which is fixed for to-morrow morning at
six o'clock. The President is away. If he were here, the man certainly
wouldn't be executed. He isn't here. I think it very essential to the
safety of the service and the safety of everything that an example
should be made of this spy. They do us great mischief; and it is very
important that the law which all nations recognize in dealing with
spies, and the punishment which every nation assigns to them, should be
inflicted upon at least one of these wretches who haunt us around
Washington. Do you know whether the President will be back before
morning?"
"I understand that he won't be back until to-morrow afternoon," I
replied.
"Well, as the President is not here, will you sign the warrant?"
"Go to Mr. Stanton," I said; "he is the authority."
"I have been to him, and he said I should come to you."
Well, I signed the order; I agreed with General Augur in his view of the
question. At about eleven o'clock the next day I met the general. "The
President got home at two o'clock this morning," he said, "and he
stopped it all."
But it was not only in matters of life and death that Mr. Lincoln was
merciful. He was kind at heart toward all the world. I never heard him
say an unkind thing about anybody. Now and then he would laugh at
something jocose or satirical that somebody had done or said, but it was
always pleasant humor. He would never allow the wants of any man or
woman to go unattended to if he could help it. I noticed his sweetness
of nature particularly with his little son, a child at that time perhaps
seven or nine years old, who used to roam the departments and whom
everybody called "Tad." He had a defective palate, and couldn't speak
very plainly. Often I have sat by his father, reporting to him some
important matter that I had been ordered to inquire into, and he would
have this boy on his knee. While he would perfectly understand the
report, the striking thing about him was his affection for the child.
He was good to everybody. Once there was a great gathering at the White
House on New Year's Day, and all the diplomats came in their uniforms,
and all the officers of the army and navy in Washington were in full
costume. A little girl of mine said, "Papa, couldn't you take me over to
see that?" I said, "Yes"; so I took her over and put her in a corner,
where she beheld this gorgeous show. When it was finished, I went up to
Mr. Lincoln and said, "I have a little girl here who wants to shake
hands with you." He went over to her, and took her up and kissed her and
talked to her. She will never forget it if she lives to be a thousand
years old.