"Yes, yes," said Mr. Lincoln, without stirring.
Soon afterward the messenger returned again, exclaiming,
"I say she wants you!"
The President was evidently annoyed, but, instead of going out after the messenger, he remarked to us:
"One side shall not gobble up everything. Make out a list of places and men you want, and I will endeavor to apply the rule of give and take."
General Wadsworth answered:
"Our party will not be able to remain in Washington, but we will leave such a list with Mr. Carroll, and whatever he agrees to will be agreeable to us."
Mr. Lincoln continued: "Let Mr. Carroll come in to-morrow, and we will see what can be done."
This is the substance of the interview, and what most impressed me was the evident fairness of the President. We all felt that he meant to do what was right and square in the matter. While he was not the man to promote factious quarrels and difficulties within his party, he did not intend to leave in the lurch the special friends through whose exertions his nomination and election had finally been brought about. At the same time he understood perfectly that we of New York and our associates in the Republican body had not gone to Chicago for the purpose of nominating him, or of nominating any one in particular, but only to beat Mr. Seward, and thereupon to do the best that could be done regarding the selection of the candidate.
FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH STANTON.
My acquaintance with Mr. Stanton had come about through an editorial which I had written for the "Tribune"[1] on his entrance to the War Department, and which I had sent to him with a letter calling his attention to certain facts with which, it seemed to me, the War Department ought to deal. In reply I received the following letter:
My dear Sir:—Yours of the 22d only reached me this evening. The facts you mention were new to me, but there is too much reason to fear they are true. But that matter will, I think, be corrected very speedily.
You cannot tell how much obligation I feel myself under for your kindness. Every man who wishes the country to pass through this trying hour should stand on watch, and aid me. Bad passions, and little passions, and mean passions gather around and hem in the great movements that should deliver this nation.
Two days ago I wrote you a long letter—a three pager—expressing my thanks for your admirable article of the 21st, stating my position and purposes; and in that letter I mentioned some of the circumstances of my unexpected appointment. But interrupted before it was completed, I will not inflict, or afflict, you with it.
I know the task that is before us—I say us because the "Tribune" has its mission as plainly as I have mine, and they tend to the same end. But I am not in the smallest degree dismayed or disheartened. By God's blessing, we shall prevail. I feel a deep, earnest feeling growing up around me. We have no jokes or trivialities; but all with whom I act show that they are now in dead earnest.
I know you will rejoice to know this.
As soon as I can get the machinery of the office working, the rats cleared out, and the rat-holes stopped, we shall move. This army has got to fight or run away; and while men are striving nobly in the West, the champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped. But patience for a short while only is all I ask, if you and others like you will rally around me.
Edwin M. Stanton.
C. A. Dana, Esq.
A few days after this I wrote Mr. Stanton a second letter, in which I asked him to give General Frémont a chance. At the breaking out of the war Frémont had been made a major-general in the regular army and the command of the Western department had been given him. His campaign in Missouri in the summer of 1861 gave great dissatisfaction, and in November, 1861, he was relieved, after an investigation by the Secretary of War. Since that time he had been without a command. I believed, as did many others, that political intrigue was keeping Frémont back, and I was anxious that he should have fair play, in order that the great mass of people who had supported him for the Presidency in 1856, and who still were his warm friends, might not be dissatisfied. To my letter Mr. Stanton replied:
Dear Sir:—If General Frémont has any fight in him he shall (so far as I am concerned) have a chance to show it, and I have told him so. The times require the help of every man according to his gifts; and having neither partialities nor grudges to indulge, it will be my aim to practice on the maxim "the tools to him that can handle them."[2]
There will be serious trouble between Hunter and Lane. What Lane's expedition has in view, how it came to be set on foot, and what is expected to be accomplished by it, I do not know and have tried in vain to find out. It seems to be a haphazard affair that no one will admit himself to be responsible for. But believing that Lane has pluck and is an earnest- ↑ "The New Head of the War Department," New York "Tribune," January 21, 1862. Mr. Stanton became Secretary of War the middle of January, 1862.
- ↑ A few weeks later, viz., March 11th, General Frémont was assigned to the command of the "Mountain Department," composed of parts of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
