would have been competent to carry on the routine responsibilities of their posts.  The difficulty of securing any consensus of opinion or any working action between men differing from each other as widely as did Chase, Stanton, Blair, and Seward, in temperament, in judgment, and in honest convictions as to the proper policy for the nation, was an attempt that brought upon the chief daily burdens and many keen anxieties.  Lincoln insisted, however, that it was all-important for the proper carrying on of the contest that the Cabinet should contain representatives of the several loyal sections of the country and of the various phases of opinion.  The extreme anti-slavery men were entitled to be heard even though their spokesman Chase was often intemperate, ill-judged, bitter, and unfair.  The Border States men had a right to be represented and it was all-essential that they should feel that they had a part in the War government even though their spokesman Blair might show himself, as he often did show himself, quite incapable of understanding, much less of sympathising with, the real spirit of the North.  Stanton might be truculent and even brutal, but he was willing to work, he knew how to organise, he was devotedly loyal.  Seward, scholar and statesman as he was, had been ready to give needless provocation to Europe and was often equally ill-judged in his treatment of the conservative Border States on the one hand and of the New England abolitionists on the other, but Seward was a patriot as well as a scholar and was a representative not only of New York but of the best of the Whig Republican sentiment of the entire North, and Seward could not be spared.  It is difficult to recall in history a government made up of such discordant elements which through the patience, tact, and genius of one man was made to do effective work.

In February, 1865, in response to suggestions from the South which indicated the possibility of peace, Lincoln accepted a meeting with Alexander H. Stephens and two other commissioners to talk over measures for bringing the War to a close.  The meeting was held on a gun-boat on the James River.  It seems probable from the later history that Stephens had convinced himself that the Confederacy could not conquer its independence and that it only remained to secure the best terms possible for a surrender.  On the other hand, Jefferson Davis was not yet prepared to consider any terms short of a recognition of the independence of the Confederacy, and Stephens could act only under the instructions received from Richmond.  It was Lincoln’s contention that the government of the United States could not treat with rebels (or, dropping the word “rebels,” with its own citizens) in arms.  “The first step in negotiations, must,” said Lincoln, “be the laying down of arms.  There is no precedent in history for a government entering into negotiations with its own armed citizens.”

“But there is a precedent, Mr. Lincoln,” said Stephens, “King Charles of England treated with the Cromwellians.”