Early in 1864 the Chase organization sent out a confidential circular signed by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas setting forth the case against Lincoln as a candidate and the case in favor of Chase. Unfortunately for Chase, this circular fell into the hands of a newspaper and was published. Chase at once wrote to Lincoln denying any knowledge of the circular but admitting his candidacy and offering his resignation. No more remarkable letter was written by Lincoln than his reply to Chase, in which he showed that he had long fully understood the situation, and which he closed with these words: "Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I do not allow myself to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public service, and, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for change."
The Chase boom rapidly declined. The deathblow was given by a caucus of the Union members of the legislature of his own State nominating Lincoln "at the demand of the people and the soldiers of Ohio." The defeat embittered Chase. For several months, however, he continued in the Cabinet, and during this time he had the mortification of seeing Lincoln renominated in the National Union Convention amid a great display of enthusiasm.
More than once in the past, Chase had offered his resignation. On one occasion Lincoln had gone to his house and had begged him to reconsider his decision. Soon after the renomination, Chase again offered his resignation upon the pretext of a disagreement with the President over appointments to office. This time, however, Lincoln felt the end had come and accepted the resignation. Chase's successor in the Treasury was William Pitt Fessenden, Senator from Maine. During most of the summer of 1864 Chase stood aside, sullen and envious, watching the progress of Lincoln toward a second election. So much did his bitterness affect his judgment that he was capable of writing in his diary his belief that Lincoln meant to reverse his policy and consent to peace with slavery reestablished.
CHAPTER XI. NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR
The real effects of war on the life of nations is one of those old and complicated debates which lie outside the scope of a volume such as this. Yet in the particular case of the Northern people it is imperative to answer two questions both of which have provoked interminable discussion: Was the moral life of the North good or bad in the war years? Was its commercial life sound?
As to the moral question, contemporary evidence seems at first sight contradictory. The very able Englishman who represented the "Times", William H. Russell, gives this ugly picture of an American city in 1863:
"Every fresh bulletin from the battlefield of Chickamauga, during my three weeks' stay in Cincinnati, brought a long list of the dead and wounded of the Western army, many of whom, of the officers, belonged to the best families of the place. Yet the signs of mourning were hardly anywhere perceptible; the noisy gaiety of the town was not abated one jot."
On the other hand, a private manuscript of a Cincinnati family describes the "intense gloom hanging over the city like a pall" during the period of that dreadful battle. The memories of old people at Cincinnati in after days—if they had belonged to the "loyal" party—contained only sad impressions of a city that was one great hospital where "all our best people" worked passionately as volunteer assistants of the government medical corps.
A third fact to be borne in mind in connection with this apparent contradiction in evidence is the source of the greater fortunes of Cincinnati, a large proportion of which are to be traced, directly or indirectly to government contracts during the war. In some cases the merciless indifference of the Cincinnati speculators to the troubles of their country are a local scandal to this day, and it is still told, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with amusement, how perhaps the greatest of these fortunes was made by forcing up the price of iron at a time when the Government had to have iron, cost what it might.