selection of them, therefore, showed that Mr. Lincoln was seeking strength rather than amity in his cabinet; for it was certainly true that each one of them had a following which was far from being wholly in sympathy with the following of any one of the others.  The President evidently believed that it was of more importance that each great body of Northern men should feel that its opinions were fairly presented, than that his cabinet officers should always comfortably unite in looking at questions from one and the same point of view.  Judge Davis says that Lincoln’s original design was to appoint Democrats and Republicans alike to office.  He carried this theory so far that the radical Republicans regarded the make-up of the cabinet as a “disgraceful surrender to the South;” while men of less extreme views saw with some alarm that he had called to his advisory council four ex-Democrats and only three ex-Whigs, a criticism which he met by saying that he himself was an “old-line Whig” and should be there to make the parties even.  On the other hand, the Republicans of the middle line of States grumbled much at the selection of Bates and Blair as representatives of their section.

The cabinet had not been brought together without some jarring and friction, especially in the case of Cameron.  On December 31 Mr. Lincoln intimated to him that he should have either the Treasury or the War Department, but on January 3 requested him to “decline the appointment.”  Cameron, however, had already mentioned the matter to many friends, without any suggestion that he should not be glad to accept either position, and therefore, even if he were willing to accede to the sudden, strange, and unexplained request of Mr. Lincoln, he would have found it difficult to do so without giving rise to much embarrassing gossip.  Accordingly he did not decline, and thereupon ensued much wire-pulling.  Pennsylvania protectionists wanted Cameron in the Treasury, and strenuously objected to Chase as an ex-Democrat of free-trade proclivities.  On the other hand, Lincoln gradually hardened into the resolution that Chase should have the Treasury.  He made the tender, and it was accepted.  He then offered consolation to Pennsylvania by giving the War portfolio to Cameron, which was accepted with something of chagrin.  How far this Cameron episode was affected by the bargain declared by Lamon to have been made at Chicago cannot be told.  Other biographers ignore this story, but I do not see how the direct testimony furnished by Lamon and corroborated by Colonel McClure can justly be treated in this way; neither is the temptation so to treat it apparent, since the evidence entirely absolves Lincoln from any complicity at the time of making the alleged “trade,” while he could hardly be blamed if he felt somewhat hampered by it afterward.