Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/78

 68 II : F. Mc Caleb tion would arise on account of the interruption of mails. Poor service or no service, I urged, would probably lead to the supposition that the fault lay in the incapacity of the head of the Department ; and so, while I professed my willingness gladly to perform my duty to the Con- federacy, I said to them that I did not desire to become a martyr. But the Judge was overborne in his objections. It was urged that there must be no admission of inability to organize any de- partment of the government, and the President and those mem- bers of the cabinet present urged his acceptance of the portfolio, agreeing to aid and sustain him against unjust criticism. Reagan re- luctantly yielded. He confessed, however, that, instead of feeling proud of the honor, he feared that a day would soon come when he would be condemned by the public for incapacity. His fears concerning his fate as head of the department doubt- less were real ; they proved, however, utterly groundless. The work was entered upon with energy and intelligence, and in a degree scarcely matched by any of his associates. His eminently practical mind showed itself in his first measures, a brief account of which he has left in his " }iIenioirs " : On the way to my hotel from the meeting with the President, I was thinking of how I might obtain the necessary information to enable me to organize the Department, when I met H. P. Brewster, Esq., a lawyer of ability and brother-in-law of the late Senator Chestnut of South Carolina. I enquired whether he might go to Washington City for me. He said that he could do so, and agreed to go at once. I told Mr. Brewster that I wished him to perform an important service, and one not free from danger, and that I should like him to take an early train. By the time that Mr. Brewster called at my hotel I had prepared letters to St. George Offit, chief clerk in the office of the sixth auditor of the Postofifice Department; to Benjamin Clements, chief clerk to the Postmaster-General; Joseph Lewis, the chief of the bond division; to Captain Schwartzman, the head of the dead-letter office; to Mr. McNain of the finance bureau; and to Mr. Hobby, Third-Assistant-Postmaster- General. I offered them positions in the Postoffice Department of the Confederacy, and I requested them to bring with them copies of the last annual report of the Postmaster-General and copies of every form in the Department, together with the postal maps of the Southern States. Strange as it may seem, all of those to whom the Judge wrote, except Third Assistant Postmaster-General Hobby and a clerk in the department from Florida, quitted Washington on his summons and joined him in Montgomery, there to perfect the machinery for distributing the mails over the Confederacy. The recruits from Washington faithfully carried with them the blank forms and all necessary papers used in the dispatch of business. A postal map