Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.
The next morning Mr. Seward wrote briefly: "I have cheerfully resumed the functions of this department, in obedience to your command." Mr. Chase seemed to hesitate. On December 20, in the afternoon, he had written a letter, in which he had said that he thought it desirable that his resignation should be accepted. He gave as his reason that recent events had "too rudely jostled the unity" of the cabinet; and he intimated that, with both himself and Seward out of it, an improved condition might be reached. He had not, however, actually dispatched this, when the President's
note reached him. He then, though feeling his convictions strengthened, decided to hold back the letter which he had prepared and "to sleep on" the matter. Having slept, he wrote, on the morning of December 22, a different letter, to the effect that, though reflection had not much, if at all, changed his original opinion as to the desirability of his resignation, yet he would conform to the judgment and wishes of the President. If Mr. Chase was less gracious than Mr. Seward in this business, it is to be remembered that he was very much more dissatisfied with the President's course than was Mr. Seward, who, indeed, for the most part was not dissatisfied at all.
Thus a dangerous crisis was escaped rather than overcome. For though after the relief given by this plain speaking the situation did not again become quite so strained as it had previously been, yet disagreement between men naturally prudent and men naturally extremist was inevitable. Nevertheless it was something that the two sections had encountered each other, and that neither had won control of the government. The President had restrained dissension within safe limits and had saved himself from the real or apparent domination of a faction. When it was all over, he said: "Now I can ride; I have got a pumpkin in each end of my bag." Later on he repeated: "I do not see how it could have been done better. I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward, the thing would all
have slumped over one way, and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters." Undoubtedly he had managed very skillfully a very difficult affair, but he ought never to have been compelled to arrange such quarrels in the camp of his own party.
Those counties of Virginia which lay west of the Alleghanies contained a population which was, by an overwhelming majority, strenuously loyal. There had long been more of antagonism than of friendship between them and the rest of the State, and now, as has been already mentioned, the secession of Virginia from the Union stimulated them, in turn, to secede from Virginia. In the summer of 1861 they took measures to form themselves into a separate State; and in April, 1862, they adopted a state Constitution by a vote of 18,862 yeas against 514 nays. A bill for the admission of "West Virginia" was passed by the Senate in July, and by the House in December, and was laid before the President for signature. There were nice questions of constitutional law about this, and some doubt also as to whether the move was altogether well advised. Mr. Lincoln asked the opinions of the cabinet as to whether he should sign the bill. Three said Yea, and three Nay; and it was noteworthy that the three who thought it expedient also thought it constitutional, and that the three who thought it inexpedient also thought it unconstitutional. Mr. Lincoln, not
much assisted, then decided in the affirmative, and signed the bill December 31, 1862. A statement of the reasons[[49]] which led him to this decision concludes thus: "It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution and secession in favor of the Constitution." Mr. Elaine says that the creation of this State was sustained by "legal fictions;" and Thaddeus Stevens declared that it was a measure entirely outside of any provision of the Constitution, yet said that he should vote for it in accordance with his general principle: that none of the States in rebellion were entitled to the protection of the Constitution. The Republicans themselves were divided in their views as to the lawfulness of the measure. However the law may have stood, it is evident to us, looking backward, that for practical purposes the wisdom of the President's judgment cannot be impugned. The measure was the amputation of so much territory from that which the Confederates, if they should succeed, could claim as their own; and it produced no inconvenience at all when, instead of succeeding, they failed.