Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/101

Rh from the war, their hostility was more intense against those who were responsible for the war.

If we cannot say that Thomas was a great soldier in the large use of the phrase, it can be said that he was a good soldier and that without qualifying words. He should live in history as a true patriot and a man of the highest integrity.

Of the men who occupied places in Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet, no one was more free from just criticism affecting unfavorably the value of his public services than Secretary Stanton.

Of those who were nearest to him, no one ever received the impression from his acts or his conversation that he thought of the Presidency as a possibility under any circumstances. Seward, Chase and Bates had been candidates at Chicago in 1860, and whatever may have been the fact in regard to Seward and Bates, it is quite certain that ambition for the Presidency never lost its hold upon Mr. Chase, even when he became Chief Justice of the United States.

Coupled with the absence of ambition, or perhaps in a degree incident to the absence of ambition, Mr. Stanton was the possessor of courage for all the emergencies of the place that he occupied—a courage that was always available, whether in its exercise the wishes of individuals or the fortunes of the country were involved.

It was understood by those who frequented the War Office in the gloomy days of 1862 and ’63 that a card signed “A. L.” would not always command full respect from Secretary Stanton. He was a believer in the rigid principles of the army, and although he was a humane man he smothered or subdued his sympathy for heart-broken mothers whose sons had deserted the cause of the country, in his determination to save the country through the strictest enforcement of the rules and regulations of the army. Mr. Lincoln, in his