Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/377

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for a letter that he wrote to the President, as Secretary of State, one month after his first inauguration, because the letter manifested a sense of superiority and condescendingly offered his advice and aid. It is probable that Seward did feel something of the contempt for Lincoln that his brethren in the Cabinet Chase and Stanton never ceased to express freely for Lincoln, and very frequently showed to his face throughout their long terms of office. Like them, Seward was a man of the highest social standing and of large experience in the highest public functions. It was only after Lincoln's death that any one accounted him a gentleman, much less a hero or a saint. Stanton constantly spoke of him as "The Great Original Gorilla." What he was capable of, in morals, manners and personal habits, is illustrated (see the letter above referred to, ante, pages 165-170) by the story of " The First Chronicle of Reuben." He annoyed Gen- eral McClellan by very frequent visits at his headquarters in Wash- ington, after being repeatedly treated with most humiliating slights there. These details are given by his most unqualified eulogists of all Nicolay and Hay and called proofs of their hero's humility, but there is a much more obvious way of accounting for them. Whether Seward' s letter gave offense or not, it suggested the policy that Lincoln adopted, which policy was his means of precipitating the war which he, almost alone, desired. The astuteness of that policy has been much commended by his eulogists as something without which neither the success of the war nor the emancipation would have been possible. The policy advised in Seward's letter is, ' ' Change the question before the public from the one upon slavery for a question upon Union or Disunion." The letter did not come to light for years, and Seward might well say, as he did, that Lincoln " had a cunning that was genius." See Don Piatt, in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 487).

McClure's Lincoln, etc., says (page 9): " Chase was the most irri- tating fly in the Lincoln ointment." Miss Ida Tarbell, in Me C lure" s Magazine for January, 1899, says: "But Mr. Chase was never able to realize Mr. Lincoln's greatness." Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln says (Vol. IX, page 389), about Chase: " Even to compara- tive strangers, he could not write without speaking slightingly of the President. He kept up this habit to the end of Lincoln's life." Volume VI, page 264, says: "* * * But his attitude towards the President, it is hardly too much to say, was one which varied between the limits of active hostility and benevolent contempt."

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