“You gentlemen,” continued the President, “ought to be glad that so bad a man, as you represent this officer to be, is to get his promotion, for then you won’t be forced to associate with him and suffer the contamination of his presence and influence. I will do all I can to have the Senate confirm him.”
And he was confirmed.
IN A HOPELESS MINORITY.
The President was often in opposition to the general public sentiment of the North upon certain questions of policy, but he bided his time, and things usually came out as he wanted them. It was Lincoln’s opinion, from the first, that apology and reparation to England must be made by the United States because of the arrest, upon the high seas, of the Confederate Commissioners, Mason and Slidell. The country, however (the Northern States), was wild for a conflict with England.
“One war at a time,” quietly remarked the President at a Cabinet meeting, where he found the majority of his advisers unfavorably disposed to “backing down.” But one member of the Cabinet was a really strong supporter of the President in his attitude.