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ardent party men when Lincoln was made the final choice of the organization. Mr. Cameron, as Secretary of War, was also an active and useful politician and leader of men. He was accused of giving out profitable contracts and lucrative offices to his friends, as he had the power to do; and, after a few months of service, he retired from the War Department, giving place to Edwin M. Stanton, who had been Buchanan's Attorney-General toward the stormy close of that administration. The Blair family, always Democratic, had exercised great influence in national affairs, Francis P. Blair, senior, having been a close friend of President Andrew Jackson, and, as editor of the Washington Globe, a leader of public opinion. The sons, Montgomery and Francis P. Blair, junior, were active and zealous politicians. Montgomery, as Postmaster-General, represented Maryland, one of the border States. New England was represented in Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior, was of Illinois, and had been in Congress when Lincoln represented the Sangamon district in that body. Edward Bates, whom many supported for the Presidential nomination in 1860, was a gentleman of refinement, great learning, and dignity. He was a lawyer, and, as Attorney-General, had served his country with eminent skill. He was formerly a Whig, and, being of Missouri, was a border State representative. Thus, the States represented in the Cabinet by these men, all of them amply qualified for the proper discharge of their duties, were New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,

Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, and Missouri. Mr. Stanton, who subsequently succeeded Mr. Cameron in the War Department, was a resident of Ohio. It will be seen that these seven men represented a great variety of political sentiments and opinions. They did not always agree. Lincoln sometimes facetiously referred to the Cabinet as the Happy Family.

By those who knew Seward and did not know Lincoln, it was supposed that the former would be virtually the President, and that beyond the signing of important papers Lincoln would have very little to do with shaping the policy of the administration. Mr. Seward undertook to revise and rewrite the inaugural address above described. Subsequently, he mapped out a plan of administrative operations for the President, volunteering to take the general direction of affairs, if this were required of him. It was not required of him, and they who had expected that Mr. Seward or anybody else would act as President in place of Lincoln were soon undeceived. By his vigor, firmness, and unshrinking determination, Lincoln speedily showed the world that he, and not another, was the President of the United States.

CHAPTER XIX.

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

In the White House-Assembling of the Rebel Congress-Rebel Emissaries Sent to Washington-A Vigorous Policy Clamored forThe First Gun at Sumter-Great Excitement throughout the Republic-A Nation in Arms-Attack on the Sixth Massachusetts-Notable Deaths.

WHE

HEN he installed himself in the White House, the official residence of Presidents of the United States, Lincoln found that two lamentable features of affairs were really not wholly unobjectionable, from one point of view. He was surrounded by hordes of office-seekers; the country was on the brink of war. Nevertheless, with his ready way of finding something encouraging, even in calamities, he said that if the people of the loyal States did not have implicit confidence in the stability of the Union and the Government they would not flock in such numbers to Washington to hunt for places under that Government. And, although Buchanan's administration had gone out of power leaving everything in the wildest confusion, it had left no policy for Lincoln to revoke or modify. As he expressed it, there was nothing to be undone. Buchanan had merely let things drift. The Rebels, meanwhile, had been busily engaged in beginning their so-called Confederacy. But they made But they made very little progress.

No troops had been sent against them. They had no "armed invader" to repel, as they had expected. Although the bulk of the United States army was practically in their hands, they had no excuse for fighting, none for that invasion of the North which their leaders had promised and some of their allies in the free States had expected.

The Rebel Congress assembled at Montgomery, and, on the ninth of March, 1861, passed a bill for the organization of an army. This was an insurrectionary measure, and was intended to draw the fire, so to speak, of the Government. But no steps were taken by Lincoln. Next, two commissioners, or emissaries, Mr. Forsyth of Alabama, and Mr. Crawford of Georgia, were sent to Washington to negotiate a treaty with the United States Government, just as if they represented a foreign government. They presented themselves at the State Department, but no official reception was accorded them, and when they applied to Lincoln, the President refused to see them, but sent them, with a certain grim humor, a copy of his inaugural address as an intimation of the views which, as President of the United States, he had just enunciated. They were in a quandary. Doubtless they expected to be arrested, as they might have been, being openly in rebellion against the Government and liable to be tried for treason. Still, the President did nothing. The commissioners dallied in the national capital for a time, in communication with their friends in the South, and gleaning what information they could. In order to delay their departure, they had asked

that the reply of the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, should be given to them as late as the eighth of April, and this request was acceded to. It was, taken altogether, a most extraordinary situation. Several States of the Union were formally in revolt against the Government of the Republic, with a socalled Congress in session, a full-fledged Government in running order, an army and navy in process of formation, and diplomatic agents at the capital of the nation. Lincoln made no sign.

While the commissioners, Forsyth and Crawford, were hanging about Washington, Mr. Talbot, a lieutenant in the United States army, had been sent to Charleston, South Carolina, by the President, to notify the authorities of that State and Gen. Beauregard, commander of the Rebel forces, that Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, would be provisioned at all hazards. This determination of the Government was also communicated to Forsyth and Crawford in Washington. On the eighth of April, Secretary Seward's formal reply was given to the commissioners, although it was dated March fifteenth. In the document, which was a memorandum merely, Mr. Seward formally told the commissioners that they could have no recognition from the Government of the United States.

In their reply, the commissioners said that they had expected the document earlier, although they acknowledged that they had, as they expressed it, "consented" to a delay; and they intimated that this delay had been availed of by the United States Government to prepare for war. Referring to

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