Chase’s ambition was fully understood at the White House.  During the previous year, his irritable self-consciousness had led to quarrels with the President, generally over patronage, and more than once he had offered his resignation.  On one occasion, Lincoln went to his house and begged him to reconsider.  Alone among the Cabinet, Chase had failed to take the measure of Lincoln and still considered him a second-rate person, much his inferior.  He rated very high the services to his country of the Secretary of the Treasury whom he considered the logical successor to the Presidency.

Lincoln refused to see what Chase was after.  “I have determined,” he told Hay, “to shut my eyes as far as possible to everything of the sort.  Mr. Chase makes a good secretary and I shall keep him where he is."(1) In lighter vein, he said that Chase’s presidential ambition was like a “chin fly” pestering a horse; it led to his putting all the energy he had into his work.(2)

When a copy of the Circular found its way to the White House, Lincoln refused to read it.(3) Soon afterward it fell into the hands of an unsympathetic or indiscreet editor and was printed.  There was a hubbub.  Chase offered to resign.  Lincoln wrote to him in reply: 

“My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s letter having been made public came to me only the day you wrote but I had, in Spite of myself, known of its existence several days before.  I have not yet read it, and I think I shall not.  I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the letter because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s committee, and of secret issues which I supposed came from it, and of secret agents who I supposed were sent out by it, for several weeks.  I have known just as little of these things as my friends have allowed me to know.  They bring the documents to me, but I do not read them; they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more.  I fully concur with you that neither of us can be justly held responsible for what our respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance; and I assure you, as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon you by my instigation or with my countenance.  Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not allow myself to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public service, and in that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change."(4) But this was not the end of the incident.  The country promptly repudiated Chase.  His own state led the way.  A caucus of Union members of the Ohio Legislature resolved that the people and the soldiers of Ohio demanded the reelection of Lincoln.  In a host of similar resolutions, Legislative caucuses, political conventions, dubs, societies, prominent individuals not in the political machine, all ringingly declared for Lincoln, the one proper candidate of the “Union party"-as the movement was labeled in a last and relatively successful attempt to break party lines.