One day at Cameron’s country home near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he received a telegram saying that President Lincoln would like to see him.  Accordingly he went to Washington.  Lincoln began: 

“Cameron, the people about me are telling me that it is my patriotic duty to become a candidate for a second term, that I am the only man who can save my country, and so on; and do you know I’m just beginning to be fool enough to believe them a little.  What do you say, and how could it be managed?”

“Well, Mr. President, twenty-eight years ago President Jackson sent for me as you have now done and told me just the same story.  His letter reached me in New Orleans and I traveled ten days to reach Washington.  I told President Jackson I thought the best plan would be to have the Legislature of one of the States pass resolutions insisting that the pilot should not desert the ship during these stormy times, and so forth.  If one State did this I thought others would follow.  Mr. Jackson concurred and I went to Harrisburg, and had such a resolution prepared and passed.  Other States followed as I expected and, as you know, he won a second term.”

“Well,” said Lincoln, “could you do that now?”

“No,” said I, “I am too near to you, Mr. President; but if you desire I might get a friend to attend to it, I think.”

“Well,” said President Lincoln, “I leave the matter with you.”

“I sent for Foster here” (who was his companion on the coach and our guest) “and asked him to look up the Jackson resolutions.  We changed them a little to meet new conditions and passed them.  The like result followed as in the case of President Jackson.  Upon my next visit to Washington I went in the evening to the President’s public reception.  When I entered the crowded and spacious East Room, being like Lincoln very tall, the President recognized me over the mass of people and holding up both white-gloved hands which looked like two legs of mutton, called out:  ‘Two more in to-day, Cameron, two more.’  That is, two additional States had passed the Jackson-Lincoln resolutions.”

Apart from the light this incident throws upon political life, it is rather remarkable that the same man should have been called upon by two presidents of the United States, twenty-eight years apart, under exactly similar circumstances and asked for advice, and that, the same expedient being employed, both men became candidates and both secured second terms.  As was once explained upon a memorable occasion:  “There’s figuring in all them things.”

When in Washington I had not met General Grant, because he was in the West up to the time of my leaving, but on a journey to and from Washington he stopped at Pittsburgh to make the necessary arrangements for his removal to the East.  I met him on the line upon both occasions and took him to dine with me in Pittsburgh.  There were no dining-cars then.  He was the most ordinary-looking man of high position