Of thirty-four changes suggested by Seward, the President-elect adopted twenty-three outright, and based modifications on eight others. Three were ignored. Upon only one change did the Senator really insist. He thought the two paragraphs relating to the Republican platform adopted at Chicago should be omitted, and, in obedience to his judgment, Lincoln left them out. Seward declared the argument of the address strong and conclusive, and ought not in any way be changed or modified, "but something besides, or in addition to argument, is needful," he wrote in a postscript, "to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South, and despondency and fear in the East. Some words of affection. Some of calm and cheerful confidence."[432] In line with this suggestion, he submitted the draft of two concluding paragraphs. The first, "made up of phrases which had become extremely commonplace by iteration in the six years' slavery discussion," was clearly inadmissible.[433] The second was as follows: "I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battle-fields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonise in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."
This was the germ of a fine poetic thought, says John Hay, that "Mr. Lincoln took, and, in a new development and perfect form, gave to it the life and spirit and beauty which have made it celebrated." As it appears in the President-elect's clear, firm handwriting, it reads as follows: "I am loth to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."[434]
The spirit that softened Lincoln's inaugural into an appeal that touched every heart, had breathed into the debates of Congress the conciliation and forbearance that marked the divide between the conservative and radical Republican. This difference, at the last moment, occasioned Lincoln much solicitude. He had come to Washington with his Cabinet completed except as to a secretary of the treasury and a secretary of war. For the latter place Seward preferred Simon Cameron, and, in forcing the appointment by his powerful advocacy, he dealt a retributive blow to Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, who had vigorously opposed him at Chicago and was now the most conspicuous of Cameron's foes.[435] But Senator Chase of Ohio, to whom Seward strenuously objected because of his uncompromising attitude, was given the treasury. The shock of this defeat led the New York Senator to decline entering the Cabinet. "Circumstances which have occurred since I expressed my willingness to accept the office of secretary of state," he wrote, on March 2, "seem to me to render it my duty to ask leave to withdraw that consent."[436]
The reception of the unexpected note sent a shiver through Lincoln's stalwart form. This was the man of men with whom for weeks he had confidentially conferred, and upon whose judgment and information he had absolutely relied and acted, "I cannot afford to let Seward take the first trick," he said to his secretary,[437] after pondering the matter during Sunday, and on Monday morning, while the inauguration procession was forming, he penned a reply. "Your note," he said, "is the subject of the most painful solicitude with me; and I feel constrained to beg that you will countermand the withdrawal. The public interest, I think, demands that you should; and my personal feelings are deeply enlisted in the same direction. Please consider and answer by nine o'clock a.m. to-morrow." That night, after the day's pageant and the evening's reception had ended, the President and Seward talked long and confidentially, resulting in the latter's withdrawal of his letter and his nomination and confirmation as secretary of state. "The President is determined that he will have a compound Cabinet," Seward wrote his wife, a few days after the unhappy incident; "and that it shall be peaceful, and even permanent. I was at one time on the point of refusing—nay, I did refuse, for a time, to hazard myself in the experiment. But a distracted country appeared before me, and I withdrew from that position. I believe I can endure as much as any one; and may be that I can endure enough to make the experiment successful."[438]
CHAPTER XXIX
THE WEED MACHINE CRIPPLED
1861
The story of the first forty days of Lincoln's administration is one of indecent zeal to obtain office. A new party had come into power, and, in the absence of any suggestion of civil service, patronage was conceded to the political victors. Office-seekers in large numbers had visited Washington in 1841 after the election of President Harrison, and, in the change that followed the triumph of Taylor in 1848, Seward, then a new senator, complained of their pernicious activity. Marcy as secretary of state found them no less numerous and insistent in 1853 when the Whigs again gave way to the Democrats. But never in the history of the country had such a cloud of applicants settled down upon the capital of the nation as appeared in 1861. McClure, an eye-witness of the scene, speaks of the "mobs of office-seekers,"[439] and Edwin M. Stanton, who still remained in Washington, wrote Buchanan that "the scramble for office is terrific. Every department is overrun, and by the time all the patronage is distributed the Republican party will be dissolved."[440] Schuyler Colfax declared to his mother that "it makes me heart-sick. All over the country our party is by the ears, fighting for offices."[441] Seward, writing to his wife on March 16, speaks of the affliction. "My duties call me to the White House one, two, or three times a day. The grounds, halls, stairways, closets, are filled with applicants, who render ingress and egress difficult."[442] Lincoln himself said: "I seem like one sitting in a palace, assigning apartments to importunate applicants, while the structure is on fire and likely soon to perish in ashes."[443] Stanton is authority for the statement "that Lincoln takes the precaution of seeing no stranger alone."[444]
In this bewildering mass of humanity New York had its share. Seward sought protection behind his son, Frederick W. Seward, whom the President had appointed assistant secretary of state. "I have placed him where he must meet the whole army of friends seeking office," he wrote his wife on March 8—"an hundred taking tickets when only one can draw a prize."[445] Roscoe Conkling, then beginning his second term in Congress, needed no barrier of this kind. "Early in the year 1861," says his biographer, "a triumvirate of Republicans assumed to designate candidates for the offices which President Lincoln was about to fill in the Oneida district. To accomplish this end they went to Washington and called upon their representative, handing him a list of candidates to endorse for appointment. Mr. Conkling read it carefully, and, seeing that it contained undesirable names, he replied: 'Gentlemen, when I need your assistance in making the appointments in our district, I shall let you know.' This retort, regarded by some of his friends as indiscreet, was the seed that years afterward ripened into an unfortunate division of the Republican party."[446]