Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/311

Rh sult which Mr. Seward anticipated was not realized by the country.

After the arrival of Mr. Lincoln the Massachusetts delegation called upon him to recommend the selection of Mr. Chase for the Treasury Department in preference to General Cameron, and to say that the capitalists of the East would have more confidence in the former than in the latter. Mr. Lincoln did not say what his purposes were, but he made this remark:

“From what I hear, I think Mr. Chase is about one hundred and fifty to any other man’s hundred.”

On the Saturday next but one, preceding the 4th of March, we called upon Mr. Buchanan at about eleven o’clock in the morning. He said that he should prefer to see us in the evening. In the evening we found him alone. He at once commenced conversation, which he continued with but slight interruptions on our part. His chief thought seemed to be to avert bloodshed during his administration. Next, he thought he had been wronged by both sections. Said he:

“When I rebuked the North for their personal-liberty bills, the South applauded; but when I condemned the secession movement, then they turned against me.”

He referred to the Charleston Mercury as having been very unjust, and then putting his feet together, and with his head on one shoulder, he said:

“I am like a man on a narrow isthmus, without a friend on either side.”

Within a few days of this interview, we called upon General Cass, who was then living in a house that is now annexed to the Arlington Hotel. He had retired from the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, and he had regained something of his standing in the North, but he had been so long the advocate of compromises and the servant of the slave power, that he was unable to place himself in line with the movement that was destined to destroy slavery. The slave power had more vitality than slav-