Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/436

416 upon the Presidency as an accommodation, he naturally desired that it should not be a losing business; and some of his friends, who have readily entered into his spirit, actually use this mercantile argument in favor of his reëlection.

His first duty was to form his Cabinet. The exigencies of the times urgently demanded that he should pick his Constitutional advisers from the ablest and most enlightened statesmen of the Nation. He asked nobody's advice, but made the selection himself. When the Cabinet was announced, it was the wonder of the world. The State Department was first given to a personal friend by way of a compliment, soon to be exchanged for a less responsible and more comfortable position. The gentleman appointed Secretary of the Treasury was at once discovered to be disqualified by the law; and as for the Secretary of the Navy, a wealthy burgher of Philadelphia, he said of himself that he did not know what he was appointed for, and had good sense enough to insist upon being speedily relieved of this troublesome business for which he had neither fitness nor taste. In the course of time some changes were made; men, who by their independent spirit and enlightened sense of duty, threatened to become troublesome, had to make room for others whose ascension to the Cabinet made that great council of state still more wonderful. It is impossible to draw from the traditions of the Government, or from the exigencies of the times, a principle or theory of a political character upon which so curious a Cabinet could have been constructed. But however little in its composition the great interests of the country might have been consulted, the President, true to the accommodation idea, consulted his own convenience, and selected men for the most important positions of the Government whom he desired to please and who pleased him with their company.