Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/339



EFORE the work at Cairo was finished I received a message from Mr. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, asking me to come to Washington and take charge of the Internal Revenue Office, or rather, to organize it under a statute then recently passed, but which I had not seen. After a conversation with Mr. Dana, who advised me to accept the place, I returned to Washington, where I arrived July 16, 1862. After an interview with Mr. Chase I took the oath of office before Mr. Justice Wayne of the Supreme Court. He was then aged and that fact may have deterred him from following the example of his younger associate, Justice Campbell, who resigned his office, and joined in the work of secession. Judge Wayne was disposed to conversation, but he made no allusion to the war and the issues involved.

I was assigned to a small room on the first floor of the Treasury building, on the right of the lower door fronting on Pennsylvania Avenue. First, I read the statute and formed for myself an idea of the process by which the machine was to be set in motion. The statute was a remarkable exhibition of legislative wisdom under the circumstances, but it was incomplete in parts rather than imperfect in plan. In the course of two or three days Mr. Chase assigned to me three clerks from other offices in the Treasury, and all of them very competent assistants—Mr. Estes, Mr. George Parnell, and Mr. A. B. Johnson. The order of assignment