As always, Lincoln kept his own counsel upon the maturing of a purpose in his own mind.  He listened to every adviser—­opening his office doors without reserve to all sorts and conditions—­and silently, anxiously, struggled with himself for a decision.  He watched Virginia; he watched the North; he listened—­and waited.  General Scott continued hopeless, though minor military men gave encouragement.  And whom should the President trust-the tired old General who disagreed with him, or the eager young men who held views he would like to hold?  Many a time he was to ask himself that question during the years to come.

On March twenty-ninth, he again consulted the Cabinet.(17) A great deal of water had run under the mill since they gave their opinions on March sixteenth.  The voice of the people was still a bewildering roar, but out of that roar most of the Cabinet seemed to hear definite words.  They were convinced that the North was veering toward a warlike mood.  The phrase “masterly inactivity,” which had been applied to the government’s course admiringly a few weeks before, was now being applied satirically.  Republican extremists were demanding action.  A subtle barometer was the Secretary of the Treasury.  Now, as on the sixteenth, he craftily said something without saying it.  After juggling the word “if,” he assumed his “if” to be a fact and concluded, “If war is to be the result, I perceive no reason why it may not best be begun in consequence of military resistance to the efforts of the Administration to sustain troops of the Union, stationed under authority of the government in a fort of the Union, in the ordinary course of service.”

This elaborate equivocation, which had all the force of an assertion, was Chase all over!  Three other ministers agreed with him except that they did not equivocate.  One evaded.  Of all those who had stood with Seward on the sixteenth, only one was still in favor of evacuation.  Seward stood fast.  This reversal of the Cabinet’s position, jumping as it did with Lincoln’s desires, encouraged him to prepare for action.  But just as he was about to act his diffidence asserted itself.  He authorized the preparation of a relief expedition but withheld sailing orders until further notice.(18) Oh, for Seward’s audacity; for the ability to do one thing or another and take the consequences!

Seward had not foreseen this turn of events.  He had little respect for the rest of the Cabinet, and had still to discover that the President, for all his semblance of vacillation, was a great man.  Seward was undeniably vain.  That the President with such a Secretary of State should judge the strength of a Cabinet vote by counting noses—­preposterous!  But that was just what this curiously simple-minded President had done.  If he went on in his weak, amiable way listening to the time-servers who were listening to the bigots, what would become of the country?  And of the Secretary of State and his deep policies?  The President must be pulled up short—­brought to his senses—­taught a lesson or two.