to take the lead in consultations and also to give tone and direction to the manner and mode of proceedings.  The President, if he did not actually wish, readily acquiesced in, this.  Mr. Lincoln, having never had experience in administering the Government, State or National, deferred to the suggestions and course of those who had.  Mr. Seward was not slow in taking upon himself to prescribe action and to do most of the talking, without much regard to the modest chief, but often to the disgust of his associates, particularly Mr. Bates, who was himself always courteous and respectful, and to the annoyance of Mr. Chase, who had had, like Mr. Seward, experience as a chief magistrate.  Discussions were desultory and without order or system; but in the summing-up and conclusions the President, who was a patient listener and learner, concentrated results, and often determined questions adverse to the Secretary of State, regarding him and his opinions, as he did those of his other advisers, for what they were worth and generally no more.”

It was perhaps natural, in a country so long free from wars as ours had been, that the Civil War should be regarded as a sort of political affair to be directed from Washington rather than by commanders in the field.  For the first year or so the feeling was quite general that military affairs should be directed by Congress, acting through its Committee on the Conduct of the War, and by the Secretary of War, who complained bitterly that he was not allowed to assume control of military movements and that his plans were thwarted by McClellan (whom he especially hated).  The President himself did not escape this condemnation.  The feeling at this time is expressed in a sentence in Stanton’s complaint, reflected through Chase, that “the President takes counsel of none but army officers in army matters.”  Chase declared to Welles, according to the latter, that the Treasury as well as other departments “ought to be informed of the particulars of every movement.”  The generals engaged in planning the campaigns and fighting the battles of the war, and their commander-in-chief the President, could hardly fail to find their task an uphill one when ideas so naive and fatuous as these prevailed.  It is no wonder that General Grant recorded in his Memoirs the opinion that the great difficulty with the Army of the Potomac during the first year of the war was its proximity to Washington; that the conditions made success practically impossible; and that neither he, nor General Sherman, nor any officer known to him, could have succeeded in General McClellan’s place, under the conditions that then existed.  Gradually, and by slow and often painful experience, a clearer conception of the meaning and methods of war prevailed.  In this, as in so many things, Lincoln’s insight was first and surest.  By patience, tact, shrewdness, firmness, and diplomatic skill, he held the Cabinet together and stimulated its members to their best efforts for the common cause.