But if the ferocity and the cowardice were offensive and disheartening, there was something else that was beneath contempt.  Never was self-interest more shockingly displayed.  It was revealed in many ways, but impinged upon the new President in only one.  A horde of office-seekers besieged him in the White House.  The parallel to this amazing picture can hardly be found in history.  It was taken for granted that the new party would make a clean sweep of the whole civil list, that every government employee down to the humblest messenger boy too young to have political ideas was to bear the label of the victorious party.  Every Congressman who had made promises to his constituents, every politician of every grade who thought he had the party in his debt, every adventurer who on any pretext could make a showing of party service rendered, poured into Washington.  It was a motley horde.

     “Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,
     The beggars are coming to town.”

They converted the White House into a leaguer.  They swarmed into the corridors and even the private passages.  So dense was the swarm that it was difficult to make one’s way either in or out.  Lincoln described himself by the image of a man renting rooms at one end of his house while the other end was on fire.(4) And all this while the existence of the Republic was at stake!  It did not occur to him that it was safe to defy the horde, to send it about its business.  Here again, the figure of Seward stood out in brilliant light against the somber background.  One of Seward’s faculties was his power to form devoted lieutenants.  He had that sure and nimble judgment which enables some men to inspire their lieutenants rather than categorically to instruct them.  All the sordid side of his political games he managed in this way.  He did not appear himself as the bargainer.  In the shameful eagerness of most of the politicians to find offices for their retainers, Seward was conspicuous by contrast.  Even the Cabinet was not free from this vice of catering to the thirsty horde.(5) Alone, at this juncture, Seward detached himself from the petty affairs of the hour and gave his whole attention to statecraft.

He had a definite policy.  Another point of contact with Lincoln was the attitude of both toward the Union, supplemented as it was by their views of the place of slavery in the problem they confronted.  Both were nationalists ready to make any sacrifices for the national idea.  Both regarded slavery as an issue of second importance.  Both were prepared for great concessions if convinced that, ultimately, their concessions would strengthen the trend of American life toward a general exaltation of nationality.

On the other hand, their differences—­