Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/178

 138 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS the Mississippi river. In his case, as in some other notable instances, the fact of not desiring office rather increased than diminished popular confi dence, so that unseeking he was sought. From early manhood he had served continually in the U. S. army. His duties had led him to consider the welfare of the country as one and indivisible, and his opinions were free from party or sectional intensity. Conscious of his want of knowledge of the machinery of the civil service, he formed his cabinet to supplement his own information. They were men well known to the public by the eminent civil stations they had occupied, and were only thus known to Gen. Taylor, who as president had literally no friends to reward and no enemies to punish. The cabinet was constituted as follows: John M. Clayton, of Delaware, secretary of state ; William M. Meredith, of Pennsylvania, secretary of the treasury ; George W. Crawford, of Georgia, secretary of war; W. Ballard Preston, of Virginia, secretary of the navy ; Reverdy Johnson, of Mary land, attorney-general; Alexander H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, secretary of the interior. All these had served in the U. S. senate or the house of rep resentatives, and all were lawyers. Taylor was the popular hero of a foreign war which had been victoriously ended, bringing to the United States a large acquisition of territory with an alluring harvest of gold, but, all unheeded, bringing also a