Stanton then offered to submit his resignation. “You may go to your Department,” replied the president. “I don’t want yours.” Holding up Chase’s letter, he said: “This is all I want; this relieves me; my way is clear; the trouble is ended.”267 Soon thereafter Lincoln told a member of the senatorial delegation: “Now I can ride: I have a pumpkin in each end of my bag.”268
When word of Chase’s action leaked out, a senator exclaimed to Lincoln, “What is this? I hear that Chase has resigned too. That will never do; we can’t spare him from the Treasury. Seward’s the man we want out.” Lincoln replied: “Sir, I have made up my mind that one shall not go out without both, and you gentlemen may as well understand that at once!”269 Similarly, when the editor of the Washington Chronicle, John W. Forney, said “that he hoped the President would not let Mr. Chase resign, nor Mr. Seward,” Lincoln turned red and abruptly remarked: “If one goes, the other must; they must hunt in couples.”270 (Months later, in response to yet another assault on Seward, the president remarked “that it would not do to dismiss him without dismissing Chase also, because, whether rightfully or wrongly, the people regarded them as representatives of the two wings of the party, the Radicals and the Conservatives, and ‘we can’t afford to ignore either wing, for that would sort the party down to altogether too small a heap.’ ”)271
The president did not intend that either man should resign. He let it be known “that he could not permit the idea to go out to the country now that the Cabinet was divided.”272 On December 20, Lincoln wrote to both Seward and Chase asking them to withdraw their resignations and “resume the duties of your Departments respectively.”273 Seward agreed promptly, but Chase repeated the temporizing act he had engaged in two years earlier when he was offered the treasury portfolio.
As Lincoln awaited Chase’s response, the capital buzzed with rumors. “To-day has been the gloomiest of all the days in the history of the nation in Washington,” wrote a journalist on Sunday, December 21. “The most prominent men here assert that the disease of the nation is at its crisis, and the events to be determined to-night will fix the destinies of the country.”274 Fessenden lamented that “such a curious compound is our good Abraham that no one knows how it will eventuate. His attachment to individuals, and his tenderness of heart are fatal to his efficiency in times like these.” Moreover, the senator added, Lincoln lacked “dignity, order, and vigor—three terrible defects.”275 Opponents of the administration rejoiced at the prospect of its impending breakup; friends of McClellan expressed confidence that their hero would be reinstated as commander of the Army of the Potomac and, as the price of his acceptance, would insist on controlling all the armies.
Conservative hopes were dashed on December 22 when Chase grudgingly consented to remain at his post, even though his credibility and prestige were badly damaged. Later, Orville Browning asked Senator Collamer how Chase “could venture to make such a statement in the presence of Senators to whom he had said that Seward exercised a back stair and malign influence upon the President, and thwarted all the measures of the Cabinet.” Collamer responded bluntly: “He lied.”276 Disgusted with Chase, Stanton on December 20 told Fessenden that “what the Senators had said about the manner of doing business in the Cabinet was true, and he did not mean to lie about it.” The war secretary added “that he was ashamed of Chase, for he knew better.” Caleb B. Smith later told Fessenden much the same thing.277
As Stanton and Smith acknowledged, the senators were right in thinking that the cabinet lacked harmony and was often ignored when important decisions were made. Personal antagonisms were strong. Blair called Seward an “unprincipled liar,” and Bates and Welles held similarly dim views of the secretary of state.278 Chase regarded him as an archenemy. They all resented Seward’s toplofty condescension, his meddling in their affairs, and his intimacy with the president.
But the senators’ belief, nurtured by Chase, that the secretary of state dominated Lincoln was inaccurate. “Seward knows that I am his master!” the president exclaimed to an army chaplain.279 Indeed, he was master of the cabinet in general. John Hay marveled at the “tyrannous authority” with which Lincoln “rules the Cabinet,” for he decided the “most important things” and “there is no cavil.” Hay wrote a friend that the “trash you read every day about wrangles in the Cabinet about measures of state policy looks very silly from an inside view, where Abraham Rex is the central figure continually. I wish you could see as I do, that he is devilish near an autocrat in this Administration.”280
Lincoln’s adroit handling of the senatorial putsch greatly strengthened his control over the administration. With an ingenious tactical stroke, he had successfully weathered one of the gravest political crises of the war. Months later, reviewing these dramatic events, he told John Hay: “I do not now see how it could have been done better. I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm & dismissed Seward the thing would all have slumped over one way & we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters. When Chase sent in his resignation I saw that the game was in my own hands & I put it through.”281 Seward detected a positive aspect to the cabinet crisis. “Perhaps it is not unfortunate that it occurred,” he wrote a friend on December 22. “Like the Trent affair it ought to be regarded as a proof of the stability of the country.”282
That day Lincoln was not so philosophical, telling John A. Dahlgren: “It was very well to talk of remodelling the Cabinet, but the caucus had thought more of their plans than of his benefit, and he told them so.”283 In general, the president tried to be fair to critics and wanted them to be fair in return. He explained that whenever he confronted a difficult case, “I always try to understand both sides, and begin by putting myself into the shoes of the party against whom I feel a prejudice; but then I expect that party to get into mine, so that he may also feel my responsibility.”284
The outcome of the cabinet crisis disgusted the Radicals, who seemed crestfallen. One of them complained bitterly that the “chief fault of all our public men it that they are cowards. Lincoln is the chiefest among them—the cowards—but Seward is after all not much more cowardly than Chase and the senators. Mr. Lincoln is afraid to make over his cabinet—afraid to lose Seward and Chase. But he is no worse than the senators, for they no sooner made mischief than they were frightened at their own work.”285 Hannibal Hamlin expressed disappointment in the result of the senatorial effort but predicted that at least “there will be more of energy in all the departments,” which Lincoln himself needed. Hamlin said he “deeply lamented” that “the President has not more of energy in his character—a little of Henry Clay or Andrew Jackson. But so it is. He is as God made him.”286 Fessenden remarked that if “all men upon whom we have a right to rely [had] proved brave & true and forgotten themselves in their love of country, I think it [the putsch attempt] would have been productive of great good.” He was especially disappointed at “the weak squeamishness of our friend Chase,” who, he said, lacked “nerve and force.” Fessenden predicted that the treasury secretary “will never be forgiven by many for deliberately sacrificing his friends to the fear of offending his & their enemies. To him it is owing that the Cabinet remains as it is—admitted by him to be weak, divided, vacillating and powerless.” But, the Maine senator acknowledged, Lincoln “thinks he cannot get along without Seward, and, really, it would be very difficult to supply his place at this juncture. For, though I have little confidence in him, still he represents a great and powerful army of friends.” Moreover, the country’s “foreign affairs are too complicated” to entrust to a new man.287
Some Radicals were not through attacking Seward. On December 22, Michigan’s Senator Chandler told the governor of his state that “Old Abe promises to stand firm & I think he will. We shall get rid of his evil genius Gov S. ere long, if not now. He can[’]t withstand the pressure long & without him Old Abe is naturally right.”288 Six weeks later, he was less complimentary of the president. “The Cabinet is weak & Lincoln weaker,” he
complained to his wife.289 At that same time, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts predicted “that unless things are amended instantly the Senate will in open session denounce the traitorous Secretary—and after[ward] denounce and part from the President unless he removes him.”290 The New York Tribune moaned that the inadequate cabinet “is not what our bleeding, almost dying, country calls for.”291
Egging the Radicals on, Mary Lincoln remarked “that unless Seward was dismissed, the country would be ruined within three months.”292 In January 1863, she loudly announced that “she regretted the making up of the family quarrel,” and that except for Montgomery Blair “there was not a member of the Cabinet who did not stab her husband & the Country daily.”293 Two months later, she invited Chandler and Wade to confer with her about Seward. (In 1865, Chandler spoke at length to the First Lady and reported that she “hates him [Seward] worse than ever & says the feeling is mutual.”)294
A colonel accurately observed in March: “Abe holds on with the pertinacity of a Bull dog” in the face of demands for cabinet changes.295 When two New York Radical leaders, David Dudley Field and George Opdyke, called at the White House to demand the secretary of state’s resignation, Lincoln rebuked them. “For once in my life,” he confessed, “I rather gave my temper the rein and I talked to those men pretty Damned plainly.”296 He told them that “the Government was better informed as to the necessities of the country than outsiders could be, no matter how able or intelligent.”297 Noah Brooks reported that the president “is exceeding lo[a]th to give up his [Seward’s] wise and conservative counsels, and retains him against the wishes of a respectably large fraction of his own party friends, merely because he believes that to his far-seeing and astute judgment the Administration has owed more than one deliverance from a very tight place.” In addition, the policy of the secretary of state has “always been of a character to avoid all things which might result in a divided North, and though it may have been too emollient at times, it has resulted in retaining to the Administration its cohesive strength, when it would have driven off its friends by following the more arbitrary and rash measures of Stanton.”298
Amid the December cabinet imbroglio, one change was made, though not in deference to congressional pressure. Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith, in poor health and out of sympathy with the administration’s emancipation policy, accepted a federal judgeship. In September, he had complained that “the President does not consult his Cabinet about the conduct of the war” and bitterly observed that “he might as well have no Cabinet.” For many months Lincoln ignored the cabinet majority calling for the dismissal of Buell. “I am desponding and almost despairing,” Smith confided to Thurlow Weed.299 David Davis, who had lobbied hard to have Smith named to the cabinet, wrote that the interior secretary “repels me very much. There can be neither heart nor sincerity about him & he cannot be a man of any convictions.” Ruefully he confessed to Leonard Swett: “We made a great mistake in urging [him] … for a cabinet appointment.”300
To fill Smith’s place Lincoln chose another Hoosier, Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher, who had vigorously supported colonization. (The president reportedly wanted to name Kentuckian Joseph Holt, but Radicals objected strongly.) Usher was a longtime friend of Lincoln from his days on the Eighth Judicial Circuit and handled much of the president’s legal business once he left Illinois for Washington. His appointment may have been designed to alleviate anxiety about the results of the impending Emancipation Proclamation. In his annual message, the president had stated, “I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization,” and in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he pledged that the “effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.” Naming Usher might reassure skeptics that plans to colonize the freedmen would be pursued. Usher had helped plot strategy to win approval for the Chiriqui project, emphasizing that colonization plans would “show that there will be no danger of an influx” of blacks northward.301 The appointment also pleased Indiana Moderates like Senator Henry S. Lane, but did not sit well with his Radical colleagues, who fought the nomination. The New York Tribune protested that Usher was too little known for such an important post. More famous was Congressman Schuyler Colfax, but it was reasonably anticipated that if he gave up his seat in Congress, a Democrat would replace him. Despite strong opposition, Usher was confirmed with the help of Northwestern senators who feared that otherwise Joseph Holt might be named.
Stretching the Constitution: The Admission of West Virginia
In late 1862, Lincoln worried about the constitutionality not only of the Emancipation Proclamation but also of a bill authorizing the creation of West Virginia. The northwesternmost counties of the Old Dominion had long been estranged from the eastern part of the state. Beyond the Allegheny Mountains, Virginians owned few slaves and chafed at their high taxes and their underrepresentation in the state legislature. They felt greater kinship with their neighbors in Ohio and Pennsylvania than with the residents of the tidewater region of their own state. In November 1861, delegates from thirty-four counties banded together at Wheeling and voted to secede from Confederate Virginia and establish a new state, to be called Kanawha. Six months later a Unionist legislature, in which only the northwestern portion of the state was represented, approved the creation of Kanawha and applied for admission to the Union.
The legality of this procedure was questionable. According to Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, new states can be carved from existing ones only with “the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress.” The legislature of “the restored state of Virginia,” which had representatives from counties containing roughly one-third of the state’s population, did not appear sufficiently legitimate to authorize the division of the Old Dominion. Nevertheless, Congress voted on December 10 to admit West Virginia (i.e., Kanawha).
Two days later, Lincoln, who felt some distress about the law, told the cabinet that he thought “the creation of this new State at this time of doubtful expediency.”302 In mid-December, proponents of West Virginia statehood greatly feared that Lincoln would veto the bill. He let it be known, however, “that he was not so much opposed to it as [were] some members of his Cabinet.”303 Lincoln was probably referring to Attorney General Bates, who insisted that the department secretaries be asked to submit written opinions on the wisdom and the constitutionality of the bill. The president complied. On December 27, the leading champions of statehood from Virginia reported that the “president has strongly assured us of his desire to sign the bill if he can[;] we are hopeful but not sanguine.”304 Two days later they said they had “additional reason to believe that the president will sign our bill.”305 Meanwhile, six cabinet members wrote out their opinions. Seward, Chase, and Stanton favored the measure, while Bates, Blair, and Welles were opposed. (Caleb B. Smith had resigned in order to accept a federal judgeship and did not participate in this decision; his successor, John Palmer Usher, assumed office later.) Friends of the statehood bill argued that Lincoln would be inconsistent if he vetoed it, for he had recognized the Wheeling government as the true government of Virginia and treated Francis H. Pierpont as its legitimate governor.
Lincoln’s written opinion did not reflect his earlier reservations about the expediency of admitting West Virginia. He was moved by the plight of the Unionists, whose leader, Pierpont, pleaded earnestly for statehood. “A thick gloom hangs over my mind about the new State,” Pierpont wrote in a letter which Lincoln saw. “I don[’]t know how the Union sentiment of W. Va can be satisfied. Butternutism will sweep W. Va. In fact I fear the soldiers in the field will throw down their arms [–] it will be tereble—Tereble indeed.”306 Pierpont telegraphed the president directly, saying: “I am in great hope that you will sign the bill to make West Virginia a new State. The loyal troops from Virginia have the
ir hearts set on it; the loyal people in the bounds of the new State have their hearts set on it; and if the bill fails, God only knows the result. I fear general demoralization and I must be held responsible.”307
“We can scarcely dispense with the aid of West-Virginia in this struggle,” Lincoln asserted in his own written opinion; “much less can we afford to have her against us, in congress and in the field.” The “brave and good men” of West Virginia, who “have been true to the union under very severe trials,” consider “her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death.” It would be shameful to turn them down, for “[w]e have so acted as to justify their hopes; and we can not fully retain their confidence, and co-operation, if we seem to break faith with them.” Admitting West Virginia would advance the antislavery cause, because Congress insisted that the new state’s constitution provide for gradual emancipation. Therefore, the bill “turns that much slave soil to free; and thus, is a certain, and irrevocable encroachment upon the cause of the rebellion.”
The division of Virginia should not be “dreaded as a precedent,” Lincoln argued, for “a measure made expedient by a war, is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West-Virginia, is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution.” Though he freely acknowledged that a majority of the state’s voters had not participated in the election of the legislature, he pointed out that “it is a universal practice in the popular elections in all these states, to give no legal consideration whatever to those who do not choose to vote, as against the effect of the votes of those, who do choose to vote.” Therefore, he argued, “it is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters, who choose to vote, that constitute the political power of the state.” Moreover, it should be borne in mind that many non-voters “were not merely neglectful of their rights under, and duty to, this government, but were also engaged in open rebellion against it.” To be sure, among the nonvoters there may have been some pro-Union men whose voices were smothered by their Confederate neighbors, “but we know too little of their number to assign them any appreciable value.” Common sense dictated that the disloyal should not enjoy the same status as the loyal: “Can this government stand, if it indulges constitutional constructions by which men in open rebellion against it, are to be accounted, man for man, the equals of those who maintain their loyalty to it?” Should the Rebels “be accounted even better citizens, and more worthy of consideration, than those who merely neglect to vote? If so, their treason against the constitution, enhances their constitutional value! Without braving these absurd conclusions, we can not deny that the body which consents to the admission of West-Virginia, is the Legislature of Virginia.” Citing the aphorism that “the devil takes care of his own,” Lincoln asserted that “much more should a good spirit—the spirit of the Constitution and the Union—take care of it’s own—I think it can not do less, and live.”308
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