One function of Government was that of the President alone.  An English statesman is alleged to have said upon becoming Prime Minister, “I had important and interesting business in my old office, but now my chief duty will be to create undeserving Peers.”  Lincoln, in the anxious days that followed his first inauguration, once looked especially harassed; a Senator said to him:  “What is the matter, Mr. President?  Is there bad news from Fort Sumter?” “Oh, no,” he answered, “it’s the Post Office at Baldinsville.”  The patronage of the President was enormous, including the most trifling offices under Government, such as village postmasterships.  In the appointment to local offices, he was expected to consult the local Senators and Representatives of his own party, and of course to choose men who had worked for the party.  In the vast majority of cases decent competence for the office in the people so recommended might be presumed.  The established practice further required that a Republican President on coming in should replace with good Republicans most of the nominees of the late Democratic administration, which had done the like in its day.  Lincoln’s experience after a while led him to prophesy that the prevalence of office-seeking would be the ruin of American politics, but it certainly never occurred to him to try and break down then the accepted rule, of which no party yet complained.  It would have been unmeasured folly, even if he had thought of it, to have taken during such a crisis a new departure which would have vexed the Republicans far more than it would have pleased the Democrats.  And at that time it was really of great consequence that public officials should be men of known loyalty to the Union, for obviously a postmaster of doubtful loyalty might do mischief.  Lincoln, then, except in dealing with posts of special consequence, for which men with really special qualifications were to be found, frankly and without a question took as the great principle of his patronage the fairest possible distribution of favours among different classes and individuals among the supporters of the Government, whom it was his primary duty to keep together.  His attitude in the whole business was perfectly understood and respected by scrupulous men who watched politics critically.  It was the cause in one way of great worry to him, for, except when his indignation was kindled, he was abnormally reluctant to say “no,”—­he once shuddered to think what would have happened to him if he had been a woman, but was consoled by the thought that his ugliness would have been a shield; and his private secretaries accuse him of carrying out his principle with needless and even ridiculous care.  In appointments to which the party principle did not apply, but in which an ordinary man would have felt party prejudice, Lincoln’s old opponents were often startled by his freedom from it.  If jobbery be the right name for his persistent endeavour to keep the partisans of the Union pleased and united, his jobbery proved to have one shining attribute of virtue; later on, when, apart from the Democratic opposition which revived, there arose in the Republican party sections hostile to himself, the claims of personal adherence to him and the wavering prospects of his own reelection seem, from recorded instances, to have affected his choice remarkably little.