January 6, Lincoln made an early call on Gustave Koerner at his hotel in Springfield, before the latter was out of bed. Koerner gives the following account of it in his "Memoirs":[48]
I unbolted the door and in came Mr. Lincoln. "I want to see you and Judd. Where is his room?" I gave him the number, and presently he returned with Judd while I was dressing.
"I am in a quandary," he said; "Pennsylvania is entitled to a Cabinet office. But whom shall I appoint?" "Not Cameron," Judd and myself spoke up simultaneously. "But whom else?" We suggested Reeder or Wilmot. "Oh," said he, "they have no show. There have been delegation after delegation from Pennsylvania, hundreds of letters and the cry is Cameron, Cameron. Besides, you know I have already fixed on Chase, Seward, and Bates, my competitors at the convention. The Pennsylvania people say if you leave out Cameron you disgrace him. Is there not something in that?" I said, "Cameron cannot be trusted. He has the reputation of being a tricky and corrupt politician." "I know, I know," said Lincoln; "but can I get along if that State should oppose my administration?" He was very much distressed. We told him he would greatly regret his appointment. Our interview ended in a protest on the part of Judd and myself against the appointment.
January 7, Trumbull wrote to Lincoln advising him to give a Cabinet appointment to some person who could stand in a nearer and more confidential relation to him than that which grew out of political affinity, adding that he (Lincoln) knew whether Judd was the kind of man who would meet such requirements, and enclosing a written recommendation of Judd for such a position, signed by himself and Senators Grimes, Chandler, Wade, Wilkinson, Durkee, Harlan, and Doolittle. These, he said, were the only persons to whom the paper had been shown and the only ones aware of its existence.
Let it be said in passing that this was bad advice. Any man going into the Cabinet as a more confidential friend of the President than the others would have had all the others for his enemies.
January 10, William Jayne and Ebenezer Peck (both members of the state legislature) expressed the opinion that Judd would be appointed. Evidently the Trumbull letter and enclosure had, for the time being, produced the intended effect. Jayne said that Davis and Yates were opposed to Judd, but that Butler and Judge Logan favored him.
February 17, Judd wrote from Buffalo, New York, where he was accompanying Lincoln on his journey to Washington, saying that he believed the Treasury would be offered again to Chase, and if so he must accept, although it might cause another "irrepressible conflict." He said nothing about his own prospects.[49]
Evidently Lincoln had not yet decided to take Cameron into the Cabinet, but after he arrived in Washington the influence of Seward and Weed, which Dr. Ray had prefigured in a letter to Trumbull, prevailed upon him to do so. This was the opinion of Montgomery Blair, a high-minded man and an acute observer, expressed to Gideon Welles in these words:
Cameron had got into the War Department by the contrivance and cunning of Seward who used him and other corruptionists as he pleased with the assistance of Thurlow Weed; that Seward had tried to get Cameron into the Treasury, but was unable to quite accomplish that, and, after a hard underground quarrel against Chase, it ended in the loss of Cameron, who went over to Chase and left Seward.[50]
When Cameron and Smith were appointed, the Berlin Mission was given to Judd, as a salve to his wound. Gustave Koerner had been "slated" in the newspapers for the Berlin Mission, although he had not applied for it. A telegram had been sent out from Springfield to the effect that that place had been reserved for him, and he erroneously supposed that it had been done with Lincoln's consent. It had been published far and wide in America and Europe without contradiction. Koerner's friends on both sides of the water had written congratulatory letters to him, and everybody seemed to think that the thing was done, and wisely done. Some of his clients had notified him that, having observed in the newspapers that he was going abroad for a few years, they had engaged other counsel to attend to their law business. At this very time Koerner was laboring for Judd's appointment as member of the Cabinet.
The same telegram that announced failure in this attempt announced that Judd had been designated as Minister to Prussia and had accepted. Koerner felt humiliated, and he now applied for some other foreign mission which might be awarded to the German element of the party—preferably that of Switzerland; but it was now too late. The other places had all been spoken for. At a later period he was appointed Minister to Spain.