kind. His sense of humor aided him wonderfully in this particular. The incongruity of a man in his position, and with the very life of the country at stake, pausing to appoint postmasters, struck him forcibly. What is the matter, Mr. Lincoln," said a friend one day, when he saw him looking particularly grave and dispirited. "Has anything gone wrong at the front?"

"No," said the President, with a tired smile. “It isn't the war; it's the post-office at Brownsville, Missouri."

The "Public Man" relates in his " Diary" the end of an interview he and a friend had with the President on March 7:

"He walked into the corridor with us; and, as he bade us good-by and thanked for what he had told him, he again brightened up for a moment and asked him in an abrupt kind of way, laying his hand as he spoke with a queer but not uncivil familiarity on his shoulder, 'You haven't such a thing as a postmaster in your pocket, have you?

stared at him in astonishment, and I thought a little in alarm, as if he suspected a sudden attack of insanity; then Mr. Lincoln went on: 'You see it seems to me kind of unnatural that you shouldn't have at least a postmaster in your pocket. Everybody I've seen for days past has had foreign ministers, and collectors, and all kinds, and I thought you couldn't have got in here without having at least a postmaster get into your pocket!"

The "strange bed-fellows" politics was constantly making always amused him. One day a man turned up who had letters of recommendation from the most prominent pair of enemies in the Republican party, Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. The President immediately did what he could for him:

Mr. Adams is magnificently recommended; but the great point in his favor is that Thurlow Weed and Horace Greeley join in recommending him I suppose the like never

happened before, and never will again; so that it is now or never. What say you?

A less obvious perplexity than the office-seekers for Mr. Lincoln at this period, though a no less real one, was the attitude of his Secretary of State-his cheerful assumption that he, not Mr. Lincoln, was the final authority of the administration.

Mr. Seward had been for years the leader of the Republican party. His defeat in the Chicago Convention of 1860 had been a terrible blow to a large number of people, though Seward himself had taken it nobly. "The Republican party was not made for Mr. Seward," he told his friends, "but Mr. Seward for the Republican party," and he went heartily into the campaign. But he believed, as many Republicans did, that Lincoln was unfit for the presidency, and that some one of his associates would be obliged to assume leadership. When Mr. Seward accepted the Secretaryship of State, he evidently did it with the idea that he was to be the Providence of the administration. "It is inevitable," he wrote to his wife on December 28th, the very day he wrote to Mr. Lincoln of his acceptance. "I will try to save freedom and my country." A week later he wrote home, "I have assumed a sort of dictatorship for defense, and am laboring night and day with the cities and States. My hope, rather my confidence, is unabated." And again, on January 18th; "It seems to me if I am absent only eight days, this administration, the Congress, and the District would fall into consternation and despair. I am the only hopeful, calm, conciliatory person here."

When Lincoln arrived in Washington and asked Seward to read the inaugural address, the latter gave it the closest attention, modifying it to fit his own policy, and in defense of the changes he made, he wrote to the President-elect: "Only the soothing words which I have spoken have saved

us and carried us along thus far. Every loyal man, and indeed every disloyal man, in the South will tell you this."

He began his duties as Secretary of State with the same confidence in his call to be the real, if not the apparent, head of affairs. When the question of relieving Sumter came up, he believed that it was he who was managing the matter. "I wish I could tell you something of the political troubles of the country," he wrote home, "but I cannot find the time. They are enough to tax the wisdom of the wisest. Fort Sumter is in danger. Relief of it practically impossible. The commissioners from the Southern Confederacy are here. These cares fall chiefly on me."

According to Mr. Welles, Secretary of the Navy, “confidence and mutual frankness on public affairs and matters pertaining to the government, particularly on what related to present and threatened disturbances, existed among all the members [of the cabinet], with the exception of Mr. Seward, who had, or affected, a certain mysterious knowledge which he was not prepared to impart." Mr. Welles asserts that Mr. Seward carried so far his assumption of the cares" of Sumter and other questions as to meddle in the duties of his associates in the cabinet. He opposed regular cabinet meetings, and at first had his way. After Tuesdays and Fridays were set as cabinet days, he contended that it was not necessary that a member should come to the meetings unless especially summoned by Mr. Lincoln or himself.

If Mr. Seward had been less self-confident, he would have seen before the end of March that Mr. Lincoln had a mind of his own, and with it a quiet way of following its decisions. Others had seen this. For instance, he had had his own way about who should go into the cabinet. “There can be no doubt of it any longer," wrote the " Public Ma in his "Diary" on March 2, "this man from Illinois is no

in the hands of Mr. Seward." Then there was the inaugu ral address—it was his, not Mr. Seward's; and more than one prominent newspaper commented with astonishment on that fact.

Nobody knew these facts better than the Secretary of State. He had discovered also that Mr. Lincoln attended to his business. "This President proposes to do all his work," he wrote to Mrs. Seward on March 16. He had received, too, at least one severe lesson, which ought to have shown him that it was Mr. Lincoln, not he, who was casting the decisive vote in the cabinet. This was in reference to Sumter. During the period when the President was waiting to hear from Fort Pickens, commissioners from the Southern Confederacy had been in Washington. Mr. Seward had not received them, but through a trusted agent he had assured them that Sumter would be evacuated. There is no proof, so far as I know, that Mr. Lincoln knew of this quasi-promise of his Secretary of State. As we have seen, he did not decide to order an expedition prepared to relieve the fort until March 29. From what we know of the character of the man, it is inconceivable that he should have authorized Mr. Seward to promise to do a thing which he had not yet decided to do. The Secretary assumed that, because he believed in evacuation, it would follow, and he assured the Southern commissioners to that effect. Suddenly he realized that the President was not going to evacuate Sumter, that his representations to the Southerners were worthless, that he had been following a course which was bound to bring on the administration the charge of deception and fraud. Yet all these things taught him nothing of the man he had to deal with, and on April I he sent Mr. Lincoln a letter in which he laid down an astounding policy -to make war on half Europe-and offered to take the reins of administration into his own hands.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S CONSIDERATION, APRIL 1, 1861.

First. We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet without a policy, either domestic or foreign.

Second. This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been unavoidable. The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet applications for patronage, have prevented attention to other and more grave matters.

Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the administration, but danger upon the country.

Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office. But how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forthwith, leaving foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional action.

Fifth. The policy at home. I am aware that my views are singular, and perhaps not sufficiently explained. My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one, namely, that

we must

CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON SLAVERY, OR ABOUT SLAVERY, for a question upon

UNION OR DISUNION:

In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, to one of patriotism or union.

The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact a slavery or a party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper manifested by the Republicans in the free States, and even by the Union men in the South.

I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the issue. I deem it fortunate that the last administration created the necessity.

For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and re-enforce all the ports in the Gulf, and have the navy recalled from foreign stations to be prepared for a blockade. Put the island of Key West under martial law.

This will raise distinctly the question of union or disunion. I would maintain every fort and possession in the South.