Page:Life of Abraham Lincoln - Bowers - 1922.djvu/44

 42 Capital. Prominent men at the North declared that the South could not be and should not be coerced. And with these terrible problems puzzling him, Lincoln was also pestered with office-seekers until he remarked, "This struggle and scramble for office will yet test our institutions." For his Cabinet he chose William H. Seward, Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron, Secretary of War; Gideon Wells, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; Edward Bates, Attorney-General; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General.

The first day after inauguration the whole problem was presented to him in a letter from Major Anderson with his hungry soldiers at Fort Sumpter. He wanted provisions and reinforcements; twenty thousand soldiers would be necessary to hold the fort, and the whole standing army numbered sixteen thousand men. General Scott advised evacuation. Lincoln said, "When Anderson goes out of Fort Sumpter I shall have to go out of the White House." The military advisers differed: the cabinet differed; and while Lincoln pondered over the problem, Seward acquiesced in the general assumption that he rather than Lincoln was the real head of the Government; and accordingly prepared and laid before Lincoln "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration," in which after complaining of the "lack of policy" he boldly proposed to make war on Spain and France, and seek "explanations from Great Britain and Russia," and sug-