"We found, to our dismay," said Mr. Alley, "that the President had heard of the bitter criticisms of Mr. Chase upon himself and his administration. Mr. Lincoln urged many of Mr. Chase's defects, to discover, as we afterwards learned, how his objection could be answered. We were both discouraged and made up our minds that the President did not mean to appoint Mr. Chase. It really seemed too much to expect of poor human nature. But early one morning in the following December I went to the White House, found the President in his library, and was cordially received. As I entered he made to me this declaration:
"'I have something to tell you that will make you happy. I have just sent Mr. Chase word that he is to be appointed Chief-Justice, and you are the first man I have told of it.'
"I said, 'Mr. President, this is an exhibition of magnanimity and patriotism that could hardly be expected of any one. After what he has said against your administration, which has undoubtedly been reported to you, it was hardly to be expected that you would bestow the most important office within your gift on such a man.'
"His quaint reply was, 'Although I may have appeared to you and to Mr. Sumner to have been opposed to Chase's appointment, there never has been a moment since the breath left old Taney's body that I did not conceive it to be the best thing to do to appoint Mr. Chase to that high office; and to have done otherwise I should have been recreant to my convictions of duty to the Republican party and to the country.'
"I repeated again my sense of his magnanimity and his patriotism in making the appointment.
"He replied, 'As to his talk about me, I do not mind that. Chase is, on the whole, a pretty good fellow and a very able man. His only trouble is that he has "the White House fever" a little too bad, but I hope this may cure him and that he will be satisfied.'"
One would suppose, after this exhibition of magnanimity on the part of the President, that he would escape the criticism of Mr. Chase at least, but the latter still considered himself the inspired critic of the administration and sought the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. Nor was this all. His decisions upon the bench were in direct contradiction to the positions he had taken as a member of the Cabinet. He had criticised the President for his weakness in refusing to attack the doctrine of State rights, yet, on the first opportunity, he appeared as the judicial champion and defender of that doctrine; from his place on the bench he declared unconstitutional the Legal Tender Act which he had himself assisted in preparing and whose passage through the House of Representatives had been secured by his personal influence. While he was Secretary of the Treasury he sustained and encouraged Mr. Stanton in the exercise of the "war power" more earnestly and took more radical grounds than any other member of the Cabinet, yet when those very transactions came before the Supreme Court he denounced them as illegal and unjustified. The only explanation, the only apology that could be made by the friends of Mr. Chase was that his mind was soured by disappointment. He was a man of unbounded ambition, he had been working all his life to become President, he was convinced of his own great talents, and could not reconcile himself to disappointment.
President Lincoln's character and methods are nowhere better illustrated than in the story of his relations with Edwin M. Stanton, his great Secretary of War, a man of intense personality, of arbitrary disposition, impetuous in action, impatient under restraint, and intolerant of opposition. Combined with these qualities Mr. Stanton had great learning, unselfish patriotism, and conscientious convictions of duty. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of Kenyon College, and when still young in years attained a high rank in the practice of his profession of the law, making his head-quarters first at Pittsburgh and in 1856 at Washington. He was born and bred in Democratic principles, but had a profound hatred of slavery, and during the administration of President Buchanan was pronounced in his opposition to the disunion schemes of the Southern politicians.
Shortly after the election in 1860, when the situation at Washington was becoming critical, President Buchanan sought his advice, and Mr. Stanton prepared an argument to prove that a State could be coerced into remaining in the Union. A few weeks later Mr. Buchanan called him into his Cabinet as Attorney-General, and he immediately joined with the loyal members of the Cabinet and the Republican leaders in Congress in vigorous efforts to save the Union. But after Lincoln was inaugurated Mr. Stanton became the most scornful and unsparing critic of the new administration. He called the President an imbecile, charged Cameron with corruption, and declared that the administration was treating the treasure of the nation as booty to be divided among thieves. He predicted disaster in every direction; he declared that in less than thirty days Jefferson Davis would be in possession of Washington, and used the most intemperate and unjust language that his lips could frame in his comments upon the character and the conduct of the President and his advisers. Therefore, when he was invited to succeed Mr. Cameron, the chief object of his detestation and attack, he was placed in a peculiar situation, but was broad-minded enough to appreciate Lincoln's magnanimity, and accepted the war portfolio as the highest duty that could be assigned to a citizen. He wrote ex-President Buchanan, "My accession to my present position was quite as sudden and unexpected as the confidence you bestowed upon me in calling me to your Cabinet. And the responsible trust was accepted in both instances from the same motives and will be executed with the same fidelity to the Constitution and the laws." In another letter he wrote, "I knew that everything that I cherish and hold dear would be sacrificed by accepting office, but I thought I might help to save the country, and for that I was willing to perish."
When some one objected to Stanton's appointment on account of his ungovernable temper, and stated that he was in the habit of jumping up and down when he lost his patience, Lincoln replied,—