During twenty months, since their clash in April, 1861, Seward and Lincoln had become friends; not merely official associates, but genuine comrades.  Seward’s earlier condescension had wholly disappeared.  Perhaps his new respect for Lincoln grew out of the President’s silence after Sumter.  A few words revealing the strange meddling of the Secretary of State would have turned upon Seward the full fury of suspicion that destroyed McClellan.  But Lincoln never spoke those words.  Whatever blame there was for the failure of the Sumter expedition, he quietly accepted as his own.  Seward, whatever his faults, was too large a nature, too genuinely a lover of courage, of the nonvindictive temper, not to be struck with admiration.  Watching with keen eyes the unfolding of Lincoln, Seward advanced from admiration to regard.  After a while he could write, “The President is the best of us.”  He warmed to him; he gave out the best of himself.  Lincoln responded.  While the other secretaries were useful, Seward became necessary.  Lincoln, in these dark days, found comfort in his society.(10) Lincoln was not going to allow Seward to be driven out of the Cabinet.  But how could he prevent it?  He could not say.  He was in a quandary.  For the moment, the Republican leaders were so nearly of one mind in their antagonism to Seward, that it demanded the greatest courage to oppose them.  But Lincoln does not appear to have given a thought to surrender.  What puzzled him was the mode of resistance.

Now that he was wholly himself, having confidence in whatever mode of procedure his own thought approved, he had begun using methods that the politicians found disconcerting.  The second conference with the Senators was an instance.  Returning in the same mood in which they had left him, with no suspicion of a surprise in store, the Senators to their amazement were confronted by the Cabinet—­or most of it, Seward being absent.(11) The Senators were put out.  This simple maneuver by the President was the beginning of their discomfiture.  It changed their role from the ambassadors of an ultimatum to the participants in a conference.  But even thus, they might have succeeded in dominating the event, though it is hardly conceivable that they could have carried their point; they might have driven Lincoln into a corner; had it not been for the make-up of one man.  Again, the destiny that is in character!  Lincoln was delivered from a quandary by the course which the Secretary of the Treasury could not keep himself from pursuing.

Chase, previous to this hour, may truly be called an imposing figure.  As a leader of the extreme Republicans, he had earned much fame.  Lincoln had given him a free hand in the Treasury and all the financial measures of the government were his.  Hitherto, Vindictives of all sorts had loved him.  He was a critic of the President’s mildness, and a severe critic of Seward.  But Chase was not candid.  Though on the surface he scrupulously avoided any hint of cynicism, any point of resemblance to Seward, he was in fact far more devious, much more capable of self-deception.  He had little of Seward’s courage, and none of his aplomb.  His condemnation of Seward had been confided privately to Vindictive brethren.