his own cause by seeming to sacrifice Blair, but later on, when his own election was fairly certain, but a greater degree of unity in the Republican party was to be gained, did ask Blair to go; (Blair’s quarrels, it should be added, had become more and more outrageous).  So he went and immediately flung himself with enthusiasm into the advocacy of Lincoln’s cause.  All the men who left Lincoln remained his friends, except one who will shortly concern us.  Of Lincoln’s more important ministers Welles did his work for the Navy industriously but unnoted.  Stanton, on the other hand, and Lincoln’s relations with Stanton are the subjects of many pages of literature.  These two curious and seemingly incompatible men hit upon extraordinary methods of working together.  It can be seen that Lincoln’s chief care in dealing with his subordinates was to give support and to give free play to any man whose heart was in his work.  In countless small matters he would let Stanton disobey him and flout him openly. ("Did Stanton tell you I was a damned fool?  Then I expect I must be one, for he is almost always right and generally says what he means.”) But every now and then, when he cared much about his own wish, he would step in and crush Stanton flat.  Crowds of applicants to Lincoln with requests of a kind that must be granted sparingly were passed on to Stanton, pleased with the President, or mystified by his sadly observing that he had not much influence with this Administration but hoped to have more with the next.  Stanton always refused them.  He enjoyed doing it.  Yet it seems a low trick to have thus indulged his taste for unpopularity, till one discovers that, when Stanton might have been blamed seriously and unfairly, Lincoln was very careful to shoulder the blame himself.  The gist of their mutual dealings was that the hated Stanton received a thinly disguised, but quite unfailing support, and that hated or applauded, ill or well, wrong in this detail and right in that, he abode in his department and drove, and drove, and drove, and worshipped Lincoln.  To Seward, who played first and last a notable part in history, and who all this time conducted foreign affairs under Lincoln without any mishap in the end, one tribute is due.  When he had not a master it is said that his abilities were made useless by his egotism; yet it can be seen that, with his especial cause to be jealous of Lincoln, he could not even conceive how men let private jealousy divide them in the performance of duty.

It was otherwise with the ablest man in the Cabinet.  Salmon P. Chase must really have been a good man in the days before he fell in love with his own goodness.  Lincoln and the country had confidence in his management of the Treasury, and Lincoln thought more highly of his general ability than of that of any other man about him.  He, for his part, distrusted and despised Lincoln.  Those who read Lincoln’s important letters and speeches see in him at once a