Team Of Rivals Part 50

In making his case, Riddle recalled, Lincoln "was plain, sincere, and most impressive." Riddle and Spalding were "perfectly satisfied" and a.s.sured Lincoln that Chase would be, too. Once again, Lincoln had sutured a potentially dangerous wound within his administration and his party.

IT WAS A WARM DAY on June 7, 1864, when Republicans gathered in Baltimore to choose their candidates for president and vice president. Noah Brooks was moved by the sight of the people's representatives gathering "in the midst of a civil war and in the actual din of battle" to perform the most precious function of democracy. The Democrats would also meet that summer, though they delayed their convention until the end of August to give themselves a better chance to react to the latest events on the battlefield.

As the delegates from twenty-five states flocked to the Republican Convention, which was relabeled the National Union Convention, Lincoln's renomination was a.s.sured. So certain was the outcome that David Davis, who had been instrumental in guiding Lincoln to the nomination four years earlier, chose not to attend. He had originally planned to go, he told Lincoln, "but since the New York & Ohio Conventions, the necessity for doing so is foreclosed-I have kept count of all the States that have instructed, & you must be nominated by acclamation-if there had been a speck of opposition, I wd have gone to Baltimore-But the opposition is so utterly beaten, that the fight is not even interesting, and the services of no one is necessary." In Judge Davis's stead, Lincoln sent John Nicolay as his personal emissary to the convention.

Even Horace Greeley, while holding out for an alternative, acknowledged that the president had earned an honored place in the hearts of his fellow Americans. "The People think of him by night & by day & pray for him & their hearts are where they have made so heavy investments." Long before the convention opened its doors, the official nominating committee said, "popular instinct had plainly indicated [Lincoln] as its candidate," and the work of the convention was simply to register "the popular will." While politicians in Washington may have entertained other prospects, Brooks observed, "the country at large really thought of no name but Lincoln's."

There were, of course, some pockets of resistance. At the end of May, several hundred malcontents had gathered in Cleveland's Chapin Hall to nominate John Fremont for president on a third-party ticket. Fremont had never forgiven Lincoln for relieving him of command in 1861. Though he had eventually been offered another commission, he had refused upon learning that he would report to another general. His supporters were a mix of radicals, abolitionists, disappointed office seekers, and Copperheads. They hoped to split the Republican Party with a platform calling for a const.i.tutional amendment ending slavery. They demanded that Congress, rather than the president, take the lead on Reconstruction, and pressed for the "confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their distribution among the soldiers."

Lincoln had been in the telegraph office when reports of the Fremont convention came over the wires. Hearing that the attendance was a mere four hundred of the expected thousands, he was reminded of a pa.s.sage in the Bible. Opening his Bible to I Samuel 22:2, he read aloud: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men."

The night before the Baltimore convention, Lincoln talked with Noah Brooks. When Brooks observed that his "renomination was an absolute certainty," Lincoln "cheerfully conceded that point without any false modesty." Understanding that there were several candidates for vice president, including the inc.u.mbent Hannibal Hamlin, New York's Daniel d.i.c.kinson, and Tennessee's military governor, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln declined to express his preference. He did say, however, that "he hoped that the convention would declare in favor of the const.i.tutional amendment abolishing slavery," and he asked Brooks to report back to him all "the odd bits of gossip" that a good reporter would pick up.

As expected, the convention was initially confronted with two contesting delegations from Missouri: an anti-Blair radical delegation pledged to vote for Grant as a means of expressing displeasure with Lincoln, and a pro-Blair conservative delegation pledged to Lincoln. With the president's approval, the radical delegation was seated. Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating "all the elements of the Republican party-including the impracticables, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women." Moreover, the radicals had tacitly agreed that they would switch their votes to Lincoln after the first ballot, making the president's nomination unanimous.

Nothing better indicated the nation's transformation since the Chicago convention four years earlier than the tumultuous applause that greeted the third resolution of the platform: "Resolved, That as Slavery was the cause, and now const.i.tutes the strength, of this Rebellion...[we] demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic." While upholding the president's proclamation, which "aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil," the resolution continued: "we are in favor, furthermore," of a const.i.tutional amendment to "forever prohibit the existence of slavery" in the United States.

Resounding applause also greeted the resolution thanking soldiers and sailors, "who have periled their lives in defense of their country"; but the crowd's greatest demonstration was reserved for the resolution endorsing Lincoln's leadership. "The enthusiasm was terrific," Brooks noted, "the convention breaking out into yells and cheers unbounded as soon as the beloved name of Lincoln was spoken." The only discordant note was the pa.s.sage of a radical plank aimed at conservative Montgomery Blair, calling for "a purge of any cabinet member" who failed to support the platform in full. "Harmony was restored" when the roll call nominating Lincoln was completed, at which point, the National Republican noted, "the audience rose en ma.s.se, and such an enthusiastic demonstration was scarcely ever paralleled. Men waved their hands and hats, and ladies, in the galleries, their kerchiefs," while the band played "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The next order of business was the nomination of a vice president. Though Thurlow Weed was not a delegate, his towering presence played a central role in the selection of Andrew Johnson. Always alive to the interests of his oldest friend, Seward, Weed at once understood that if New York's Daniel d.i.c.kinson received the vice presidential nod, Seward might not retain his position as secretary of state. An unwritten rule dictated that two significant posts could not be allotted to a single state. Weed had initially supported Hamlin but soon saw that the growing sentiment for a War Democrat would result in the nomination of either d.i.c.kinson or Johnson. He placed the Weed-Seward machine behind the victorious Johnson.

The results of the convention were routed through the telegraph office at the War Department. It was "Stanton's theory," his secretary explained, that "everything concerned his own Department," and he had centralized into his office "the whole telegraphic system of the United States." Lincoln was present in the late afternoon when a clerk handed him a dispatch reporting Johnson's nomination. Having not yet heard his own nomination confirmed, Lincoln was startled. "What! do they nominate a Vice-President before they do a President?" Is that not putting "the cart before the horse"? The embarra.s.sed operator explained that the dispatch about the president's nomination had come in several hours earlier, while Lincoln was at lunch, and had been sent directly to the White House. "It is all right," replied Lincoln. "I shall probably find it on my return."

The following day, a committee appointed by the delegates arrived at the White House to officially notify Lincoln of his nomination. In response to their laudatory statement, Lincoln said he did not a.s.sume that the convention had found him to be "the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that 'it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.'" Later that night, when the Ohio delegation came to serenade him at the White House, he humbly directed their attention to the soldiers in the field. "What we want, still more than Baltimore conventions or presidential elections, is success under Gen. Grant," he said. "I propose that you help me to close up what I am now saying with three rousing cheers for Gen. Grant and the officers and soldiers under his command."

A visitor to the White House at this time told Lincoln that "nothing could defeat him but Grant's capture of Richmond, to be followed by [the general's] nomination at Chicago"-where the Democratic Convention was scheduled to take place later that summer. "Well," said Lincoln, "I feel very much like the man who said he didn't want to die particularly, but if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he would like to die of."

CHAPTER 24

"ATLANTA IS OURS"

UNION HOPES FOR imminent victory faded as the spring of 1864 gave way to summer. "Our troops have suffered much and accomplished but little," Gideon Welles recorded in his diary on June 20. "The immense slaughter of our brave men chills and sickens us all." Unable to dislodge Lee's troops, who displayed what the White House secretary William Stoddard called an awe-inspiring "steady courage," Grant settled in for a siege at Petersburg. Meanwhile, Sherman was encountering tough resistance as he moved slowly through Georgia.

Daily reports of the brutal battles in Virginia and Georgia provoked a particular dread in the Sewards, the Blairs, the Bates, and the Welleses, all of whom had loved ones at the front. For the Sewards, whose youngest son, William, nearly lost his life at Cold Harbor, there were many sleepless nights. "I cannot yet bring myself to the contemplation of your death or of your suffering as others have done," Frances Seward told Will, though she considered that he was "fighting for a holy cause" in a "righteous" conflict, unlike the Mexican War, which she had vigorously opposed when her older son, Augustus, had been in the army.

Elizabeth Blair had become "so nervous" with her husband in the navy and her brother Frank moving toward Atlanta with Sherman that she "quake[d] all night with terror." Even her normally cheerful father was perpetually "grave & anxious," certain that if Frank were taken prisoner, the Confederates "would be as eager to kill him physically-as the Radicals are politically." Bates feared for his twenty-one-year-old son, Coalter, who was with General Meade and the Army of the Potomac, and Welles was pained "beyond what I can describe" when his eighteen-year-old son, Thomas, departed "with boyish pride and enthusiasm" to join General Grant. "It was uncertain whether we should ever meet again," he recorded in his diary, "and if we do he may be mutilated, and a ruined man." His anxiety left Welles "sad, and unfit for any labor." The painful apprehension within the administration mirrored the fears experienced in hundreds of thousands of homes throughout the country.

Lincoln knew the ravages of this most b.l.o.o.d.y war had touched every town and household of America. The time had come to revive the oppressed spirits of the people. In mid-June, he found the perfect forum for a public speech when he journeyed to the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia, designed to benefit the Sanitary Commission. Thousands of citizens had come from the surrounding area to enjoy the collections of art, statuary, and flowers, the zoological garden, restaurants, raffles, and games that covered a two-mile concourse and were said to offer "miracles as many as Faust saw in his journey through the world of magic."

At seven o'clock on the morning of June 16, Lincoln, Mary, and Tad left for Philadelphia by train. Word of their journey had spread. At every depot along the way, cheering crowds gathered for a glimpse of the first family. Arriving before noon, they were escorted in an open carriage up Broad Street to Chestnut Street and the Continental Hotel. The streets were "lined with citizens" and the windows "crowded with ladies waving their handkerchiefs." The unbounded ardor and spontaneous applause was such, one reporter noted, "as has not been heard for many a day in Philadelphia." Lincoln declined to speak at the hotel or at the fairgrounds that afternoon, preferring to wait until the dinner that evening. Perhaps he knew that his remarks, which he had carefully drafted, would be recorded more accurately in that setting.

"War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible," he began. "It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented.... It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the 'heavens are hung in black.'" Nonetheless, he reminded his listeners, "We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under G.o.d, I hope it never will until that time." The force of his words and the unshakable determination they embodied instantly uplifted and emboldened his audience.

A few days later, in order to stem his own "intense anxiety" about the stalemate in Virginia, Lincoln decided to visit Grant at his headquarters at City Point. Welles strongly disapproved of the decision. "He can do no good," he predicted. "It can hardly be otherwise than to do harm, even if no accident befalls him. Better for him and the country that he should remain at his post here." The navy secretary failed to understand the importance of these trips to Lincoln, who needed the contact with the troops to lift his own spirits so that he, in turn, could better buoy the spirits of those around him.

Accompanied by Tad and a.s.sistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox, Lincoln left the Washington Navy Yard aboard the river steamer Baltimore in the early evening of June 20. The journey to City Point, which was about 180 miles farther south by water than Aquia Creek, took more than sixteen hours. Horace Porter, Grant's aide-de-camp, recalled that when the steamer arrived at the wharf, Lincoln "came down from the upper deck...and reaching out his long, angular arm, he wrung General Grant's hand vigorously, and held it in his for some time," as he expressed great appreciation for all that Grant had been through since they last met in Washington. Introduced to the members of Grant's staff, the president "had for each one a cordial greeting and a pleasant word. There was a kindliness in his tone and a hearty manner of expression which went far to captivate all who met him."

Over a "plain and substantial" lunch, typical of "the hero of Vicksburg," noted the Herald correspondent, Lincoln conversed entertainingly and delivered "three capital jokes" that provoked hilarity. When the meal was finished, Grant suggested a ride to the front ten miles away. Porter noted that Lincoln made an odd appearance on his horse as his "trousers gradually worked up above his ankles, and gave him the appearance of a country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday clothes." The sight "bordered upon the grotesque," but the troops he pa.s.sed along the way "were so lost in admiration of the man that the humorous aspect did not seem to strike them...cheers broke forth from all the commands, and enthusiastic shouts and even words of familiar greeting met him on all sides."

Reaching the front, the president took "a long and lingering look" at the sights of Petersburg, where Lee's armies were gathered behind formidable earthworks. On the return trip, they pa.s.sed a brigade of black soldiers, who rushed forward to greet the president, "screaming, yelling, shouting: 'Hurrah for the Liberator; Hurrah for the President.'" Their "spontaneous outburst" moved Lincoln to tears, "and his voice was so broken by emotion" that he could hardly reply.

That evening, Porter recalled, as Lincoln sat for hours with General Grant and his staff, "we had an opportunity of appreciating his charm as a talker, and hearing some of the stories for which he had become celebrated." The young aide-de-camp observed what so many others had seen before, that Lincoln "did not tell a story merely for the sake of the anecdote, but to point a moral or clench a fact." Seated on "a low camp-chair," with his long legs wrapped around each other "as if in an effort to get them out of the way," he used his arms to accompany his words and "joined heartily with the listeners in the laugh which followed." Discussion of a new form of gunpowder prompted a story of two competing powder merchants in Springfield. The sight of a newly patented artillery trace led to the recitation of a line from a poem: "Sorrow had fled, but left her traces there." Reference to the electoral college brought forth the quaint observation that "the Electoral College is the only one where they choose their own masters." When the convivial evening came to a close, the president walked with Porter to his tent, taking a peek inside, "from curiosity, doubtless, to see how the officers were quartered," before returning to his stateroom on the Baltimore.

The next morning, "in excellent spirits," Lincoln steamed up the James River with Grant to visit General Butler and Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, Elizabeth Blair's husband. Talking with Butler about Grant, he observed that "When Grant once gets possession of a place, he holds on to it as if he had inherited it." After lunch, it was time to return to Washington. On taking leave, General Grant took Lincoln aside, a.s.suring him with a rousing pledge that the president would repeat and cite in the weeks ahead: "You will never hear of me farther from Richmond than now, till I have taken it. I am just as sure of going into Richmond as I am of any future event. It may take a long summer day, but I will go in."

On the morning of June 23, John Hay reported that Lincoln returned to the White House "sunburnt and f.a.gged but still refreshed and cheered. He found the army in fine health good position and good spirits." The next day, at the regular Friday cabinet meeting, the skeptical Welles conceded that the trip to the front had "done him good, physically, and strengthened him mentally in confidence in the General and army." And of signal importance, Lincoln could now better project his own renewed hope to the anxious public, lauding Grant's "extraordinary qualities as a commander" to one reporter, and speaking to another "of the condition of army matters in the very highest terms of confidence."

Acutely aware of his own emotional needs, Lincoln had chosen exactly the right time to review the troops, for his conversations with Grant and his interactions with the soldiers sustained and inspired him during the troubling days ahead. "Having hope," writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, "means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist att.i.tude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks." Hope is "more than the sunny view that everything will turn out all right"; it is "believing you have the will and the way to accomplish your goals." More clearly than his colleagues, Lincoln understood that numerous setbacks were inevitable before the war could be brought to a close. Yet in the end, he firmly believed the North would prevail. "We are today further ahead than I thought one year and a half ago we should be," he told Noah Brooks that June, "and yet there are plenty of people who believe that the war is about to be substantially closed. As G.o.d is my judge I shall be satisfied if we are over with the fight in Virginia within a year."

BY THE LAST WEEK of June, the forbearance Lincoln had long shown toward his ambitious secretary of the treasury was finally exhausted. The dramatic upheaval in the cabinet began when John Cisco, a.s.sistant treasurer of New York, announced his resignation. Cisco had held the prestigious post through three different administrations and was well respected by all factions. Lincoln was anxious that his replacement satisfy both wings of New York's Republican Party. For several months, the president had been bombarded by complaints from friends in New York, including Thurlow Weed and Senator Edwin Morgan, that Chase was filling all the customs house positions with his own partisans-former Democrats who were now radical Republicans supporting Chase's own presidential hopes.

Sensitive to Weed's concerns, Lincoln told Chase to consult with Senator Morgan and ensure that his selection was satisfactory to all sides. Chase discussed the matter with the powerful New York senator but then proceeded, over Morgan's strong objection, to send Lincoln a formal nomination for Maunsell Field. A Democratic journalist with ties to New York society, Field was serving as third a.s.sistant secretary of the treasury, a post Chase had designed especially to compensate Field for the access he had provided Chase to the inner circles of New York literary and social life. The appointment was stunning, recalled the treasury registrar, Lucius Chittenden, for Field "had no financial or political standing, and his natural abilities were of a literary rather than an executive character."

Undeterred, Chase apparently a.s.sumed that his own services were so indispensable that Lincoln would sanction a controversial nominee rather than risk a messy squabble when the financial health of the nation was at stake. Chase awoke the morning after sending the Field nomination to the White House and cheerfully undertook his daily reading of the Bible, which on that summer morning included a letter St. Paul sent to the Ephesians imploring them to "Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness." When he reached the department, however, he found a disturbing note from the president on his desk. "I can not, without much embarra.s.sment, make this appointment," Lincoln informed him, "princ.i.p.ally because of Senator Morgan's very firm opposition to it." It would "really oblige" him, he said, if Chase and Senator Morgan could agree on another nominee.

Still confident that he could change the president's mind, Chase wrote an immediate request for a personal interview. When Lincoln did not respond, Chase decided to resolve the difficulty on his own. He telegraphed Cisco in New York and pleaded with him to withdraw his resignation and stay on for another three months. Before obtaining Cisco's answer, he received Lincoln's reply to his interview request. "The difficulty," wrote Lincoln, "does not, in the main part, lie within the range of a conversation between you and me." Lincoln went on to explain the criticism he had faced in the previous months over treasury appointments in New York, and noted that to disregard Morgan's judgment in this instance might trigger "open revolt."

Cisco's agreement to stay on should have ended the matter; but Chase, peeved at Lincoln's refusal to meet in person and bent on reestablishing his authority over his own appointments, could not rest. He decided to chasten the president with what was essentially his fourth letter of resignation, certain it would again be rejected. He began his letter by enclosing Cisco's telegram withdrawing his resignation, which, he acknowledged, "relieves the present difficulty." But then he went on: "I cannot help feeling that my position here is not altogether agreeable to you; and it is certainly too full of embarra.s.sment and difficulty and painful responsibility to allow in me the least desire to retain it. I think it my duty therefore to enclose to you my resignation."

Lincoln was seated at his desk in his office, he later recalled, when a messenger handed him a letter from the Treasury Department. "I opened it, recognized Chase's handwriting, read the first sentence, and inferred from its tenor that this matter was in the way of satisfactory adjustment. I was truly glad of this, and, laying the envelope with its inclosure down upon the desk, went on talking. People were coming and going all the time till three o'clock, and I forgot all about Chase's letter. At that hour it occurred to me that I would go down stairs and get a bit of lunch. My wife happened to be away, and they had failed to call me at the usual time [Mary was in Ma.s.sachusetts for Robert's graduation from Harvard]. While I was sitting alone at table my thoughts reverted to Chase's letter, and I determined to answer it just as soon as I should go up stairs again.

"Well, as soon as I was back here, I took pen and paper and prepared to write, but then it occurred to me that I might as well read the letter before I answered it. I took it out of the envelope for that purpose, and, as I did so, another inclosure fell from it upon the floor. I picked it up, read it, and said to myself, 'Halloo, this is a horse of another color!' It was his resignation. I put my pen into my mouth, and grit my teeth upon it. I did not long reflect."

Lincoln quickly perceived that Chase was essentially saying: "You have been acting very badly. Unless you say you are sorry, & ask me to stay & agree that I shall be absolute and that you shall have nothing, no matter how you beg for it, I will go." This presumption the president could not and would not countenance. He took his pen from his mouth and began to write.

"Your resignation of the office of Secretary of the Treasury," he tersely opened, "is accepted. Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity, I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarra.s.sment in our official relation which it seems can not be overcome, or longer sustained, consistently with the public service."

Early the next morning, Lincoln called John Hay into his office and asked him to deliver the news of Chase's resignation to the Senate as soon as it convened, along with his recommendation of former Ohio governor David Tod as his successor. "It is a big fish," he said. "I thought I could not stand it any longer." Though worried that the president was making a costly mistake, the loyal Hay proceeded to the Capitol, reaching the Senate just as the chaplain recited the opening prayer.

Still ignorant of the president's letter, Chase went about his daily business, antic.i.p.ating Lincoln's penitent request for him to continue his duties. Perhaps Lincoln would personally visit his office, put his arm around him, and again tell him how much he was needed. After breakfast, Chase went to his office, where he received word that Senator Fessenden of Maine wanted to see him immediately at the Capitol. Riding in his carriage, he surmised that the chairman of the Finance Committee wanted to discuss the various financial bills currently before him. In the midst of his conversation with Fessenden, a messenger arrived to tell the senator of David Tod's nomination. "Have you resigned?" the distraught Fessenden asked. "I am called to the Senate & told that the President has sent in the nomination of your successor." Stunned, Chase explained that he had indeed sent in his resignation, but did not know that it had been accepted.

Returning at once to the department, Chase found the letter from Lincoln. Reaching the part where Lincoln spoke of "mutual embarra.s.sment" in their relations, Chase was dumbfounded. "I had found a good deal of embarra.s.sment from him," he recorded in his diary that night, "but what he had found from me I could not imagine, unless it has been created by my unwillingness to have offices distributed by spoils or benefits with more regard to the claims of divisions, factions, cliques and individuals, than to fitness of selection." Blinded by self-righteousness and donning what Nicolay and Hay termed "his full armor of n.o.ble sentiments," Chase refused to see that in choosing the inexperienced Field, he, not the president, was filling an office on the basis of faction rather than fitness.

The startling news spread quickly on Capitol Hill. "The Senators were struck dumb with amazement," Noah Brooks reported. The members of the Senate Finance Committee convened an emergency meeting and decided to go as a body to the White House to lodge a vehement protest. "Fessenden was frightened," Lincoln later told Hay; "Conness [of California] was mad." Lincoln listened patiently to their concerns about losing Chase at this perilous time and their doubts about Tod as a viable successor. Then, reaching into his desk, he pulled out Chase's previous letters of resignation and read them aloud to his visitors, along with the gracious replies that had kept Chase in the cabinet each time. Moreover, though he agreed that "Mr. Chase had a full right to indulge in his ambition to be President," he suggested that the indiscretions of Chase's friends had so complicated matters that the two of them "disliked to meet each other" in person. In fact, in recent weeks, Chase had declined to attend most of the regular cabinet meetings. The situation had become "unendurable," Lincoln concluded, this most recent controversy being simply "the last straw." Though the committee left dissatisfied, they at least departed with a true picture of the long history behind the final break.

Chase's friend Ma.s.sachusetts congressman Samuel Hooper came in to see the president later that afternoon. He said he felt "very nervous & cut up" by Chase's departure. Treasury Registrar Lucius Chittenden was equally distraught, telling Lincoln that the loss of Chase was "worse than another Bull Run defeat," for there was not a single man in the country who could replace him. "I will tell you," Lincoln said, "how it is with Chase. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to fall into a bad habit. Chase has fallen into two bad habits.... He thinks he has become indispensable to the country.... He also thinks he ought to be President; he has no doubt whatever about that." These two unfortunate tendencies, Lincoln explained, had made Chase "irritable, uncomfortable, so that he is never perfectly happy unless he is thoroughly miserable."

At this point, according to Chittenden, Lincoln paused. "And yet there is not a man in the Union who would make as good a chief justice as Chase," he continued, "and, if I have the opportunity, I will make him Chief Justice of the United States." Chittenden concluded that this extraordinary want of vindictiveness toward someone who had caused him such grief proved that Lincoln "must move upon a higher plane and be influenced by loftier motives than any man" he had ever known. Yet while Lincoln did indeed possess unusual magnanimity, he was also a shrewd politician. He mentioned the chief justiceship to Chittenden knowing that when Chase learned of it, the prospect might dampen his public opposition. Lincoln made a similar remark to Congressman Hooper. In a relaxed conversation, he expressed his "esteem" for the secretary and his sincere "regret" that the two of them had become so "awkward" and "constrained" when they got together. When Hooper relayed these comments to his friend, Chase was moved, suggesting that "had any such expressions of good will" been tendered before his resignation, he might have acted differently. Unfortunately, it was too late.

The news of Chase's resignation was met with dismay and regret in the country. He was "the great magician of the treasury," the Chicago Tribune wrote; "his name will be handed down to history as the greatest financier of his century." Greeley's Tribune went even further, claiming that "Mr. Chase is one of the very few great men left in public life since the almost simultaneous decease of Messrs. Clay, Webster and Calhoun."

Choosing a worthy successor was vital, and it was not clear that David Tod was up to the task. Any concerns Lincoln might have had about his hasty choice were alleviated, however, when he received a telegram from the former governor declining the post for reasons of health. According to Francis Carpenter, Lincoln "laid awake some hours, canva.s.sing in his mind the merits of various public men." By morning, he had found the ideal solution, a candidate so perfect he should have considered him from the start: William Pitt Fessenden. "First," he told Hay the next morning, "he knows the ropes thoroughly: as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance he knows as much of this special subject as Mr. Chase. 2nd he is a man possessing a national reputation and the confidence of the country. 3d He is a radical-without the petulant and vicious fretfulness of many radicals."

In a far better humor, Lincoln handed Hay his official nomination of Fessenden to carry to the Senate. When Hay told him that Fessenden was in the reception room waiting to see him, Lincoln said: "Send him in & go at once to the Senate." Understanding that Fessenden might be reluctant, and perhaps remembering that three years earlier he had sent in Chase's nomination before securing his acceptance, the president hoped that a fait accompli would once again move the process forward.