The same cause had produced like results, I understood, in the Navy Department, but I was not brought in personal contact with it. The navy was not important at the beginning; it was the army that counted. Nothing but defeat was to be looked for until the heads of the various departments were changed, and this could not be done in a day. The impatience of the country at the apparent delay in producing an effective weapon for the great task thrown upon the Government was no doubt natural, but the wonder to me is that order was so soon evolved from the chaos which prevailed in every branch of the service.
As far as our operations were concerned we had one great advantage. Secretary Cameron authorized Mr. Scott (he had been made a Colonel) to do what he thought necessary without waiting for the slow movements of the officials under the Secretary of War. Of this authority unsparing use was made, and the important part played by the railway and telegraph department of the Government from the very beginning of the war is to be attributed to the fact that we had the cordial support of Secretary Cameron. He was then in the possession of all his faculties and grasped the elements of the problem far better than his generals and heads of departments. Popular clamor compelled Lincoln to change him at last, but those who were behind the scenes well knew that if other departments had been as well managed as was the War Department under Cameron, all things considered, much of disaster would have been avoided.
Lochiel, as Cameron liked to be called, was a man of sentiment. In his ninetieth year he visited us in Scotland and, passing through one of our glens, sitting on the front seat of our four-in-hand coach, he reverently took off his hat and bareheaded rode through the glen, overcome by its grandeur. The conversation turned once upon the efforts which candidates for office must themselves put forth and the fallacy that office seeks the man, except in very rare emergencies. Apropos of this Lochiel told this story about Lincoln's second term:
One day at Cameron's country home near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he received a telegram saying that President Lincoln would like to see him. Accordingly he went to Washington. Lincoln began:
"Cameron, the people about me are telling me that it is my patriotic duty to become a candidate for a second term, that I am the only man who can save my country, and so on; and do you know I'm just beginning to be fool enough to believe them a little. What do you say, and how could it be managed?"
"Well, Mr. President, twenty-eight years ago President Jackson sent for me as you have now done and told me just the same story. His letter reached me in New Orleans and I traveled ten days to reach Washington. I told President Jackson I thought the best plan would be to have the Legislature of one of the States pass resolutions insisting that the pilot should not desert the ship during these stormy times, and so forth. If one State did this I thought others would follow. Mr. Jackson concurred and I went to Harrisburg, and had such a resolution prepared and passed. Other States followed as I expected and, as you know, he won a second term."
"Well," said Lincoln, "could you do that now?"
"No," said I, "I am too near to you, Mr. President; but if you desire I might get a friend to attend to it, I think."
"Well," said President Lincoln, "I leave the matter with you."
"I sent for Foster here" (who was his companion on the coach and our guest) "and asked him to look up the Jackson resolutions. We changed them a little to meet new conditions and passed them. The like result followed as in the case of President Jackson. Upon my next visit to Washington I went in the evening to the President's public reception. When I entered the crowded and spacious East Room, being like Lincoln very tall, the President recognized me over the mass of people and holding up both white-gloved hands which looked like two legs of mutton, called out: 'Two more in to-day, Cameron, two more.' That is, two additional States had passed the Jackson-Lincoln resolutions."