Trumbull saw Horace Greeley at this time. The latter would not recommend taking a Cabinet officer from New York at all, but he did suggest giving the mission to France to John C. Frémont. If this advice had been followed, and Frémont had been kept out of the country, Lincoln would have been spared one of the most terrible thorns in the side of his Administration; but fate ordained otherwise, for when Cameron was taken into the Cabinet it became necessary to provide a place for Dayton, and Paris was chosen for that purpose.
The Cameron affair was the greatest embarrassment that Lincoln had to deal with before his inauguration. It was a fact of evil omen that David Davis, one of the delegates of Illinois to the Chicago Convention, assuming to speak by authority, made promises that Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, and Caleb Smith, of Indiana, should have places in the Cabinet if Lincoln were elected. In so doing, Davis went counter to the only instructions he had ever received from Lincoln on that subject. The day before the nomination was made, the editor of the Springfield Journal arrived at the rooms of the Illinois delegation with a copy of the Missouri Democrat, in which Lincoln had marked three passages and made some of his own comments on the margin. Then he added, in words underscored: "Make no contracts that will bind me." Herndon says that this paper was read aloud to Davis, Judd, Logan, and himself. Davis then argued that Lincoln, being at Springfield, could not judge of the necessities of the situation in Chicago, and, acting upon that view of the case, went ahead with his negotiations with the men of Pennsylvania and Indiana, and made the promises as above stated.[45]
Gideon Welles, in his book on Lincoln and Seward, says there was but one member of the Cabinet appointed "on the special urgent recommendation and advice of Seward and his friends, but that gentleman was soon, with Seward's approval, transferred to Hyperborean regions in a way and for reasons never publicly made known." That man was Cameron.
The implication here is that Simon Cameron was appointed a member of Lincoln's Cabinet in consequence of Seward's influence, and at his desire. That Seward and Weed labored for Cameron's appointment, and that Weed had private reasons for doing so, is true, but the controlling factor was something of earlier date. David Davis had left his comfortable home at Bloomington and gone to Springfield to redeem his convention pledges. He camped alongside of Lincoln and laid siege to him. He had a very strong case prima facie. He had not only worked for Lincoln with all his might, but he had paid three hundred dollars out of his own pocket for the rent of the Lincoln headquarters during the convention. This seems like a small sum now, but it was three times as much as Lincoln himself could have paid then for any political purpose. Moreover, Davis had actually succeeded in what he had undertaken.[46]
A. K. McClure says, in his book on "Lincoln and Men of War Times" (p. 139), that the men who immediately represented Cameron on that occasion (John P. Sanderson and Alexander Cummings) really had little influence with the Pennsylvania delegation, and that the change of votes from Cameron to Lincoln was not due to this barter.
Nicolay and Hay say that after the election Lincoln invited Cameron to come to Springfield, but they produce no evidence to that effect. On the other hand, Gideon Welles, quoting from an interview with Fogg, of New Hampshire (a first-rate authority), says that Cameron tried to get an invitation to Springfield, but that Lincoln would not give it; that a little later Cameron invited Leonard Swett to his home at Lochiel, Pennsylvania, and that while there Swett took upon himself to extend such an invitation in Lincoln's name, and that Lincoln, although surprised, was obliged to acquiesce in what Swett had done.[47] Swett, it may be remarked, was the Fidus Achates of David Davis at all times.
Cameron came to Springfield with a troop of followers, and the result was that, on the 31st of December, Lincoln handed him a brief note saying that he intended to nominate him for Secretary of the Treasury, or Secretary of War, at the proper time.
Almost immediately thereafter he received a shock from A. K. McClure in the form of a telegram saying that the appointment of Cameron would split the party in Pennsylvania and do irreparable harm to the new Administration. He invited McClure to come to Springfield and give him the particular reasons, but McClure does not tell us what the reasons were. Evidently they were graver and deeper than a mere faction fight in the party, or a question whether Cameron or Curtin should have the disposal of the patronage. They included personal as well as political delinquencies, but McClure declined to put them in writing.
After hearing them, Lincoln wrote another letter to Cameron dated January 3, 1861, asking him to decline the appointment that had been previously tendered to him, and to do so at once by telegraph. Cameron did not decline. Consequently Lincoln repeated the request ten days later, January 13.