So, instead of gathering
about him his friends, he selected his most powerful rivals in
the Republican party. William H. Seward, of New York, was to be
his Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, his Secretary
of the Treasury; Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, his Secretary of
War; Edward Bates, of Missouri, his Attorney-General. The names
of all of these men had been before the Convention. Each one had
hoped to be President in his stead. For the other three members
of his Cabinet he had to look elsewhere. Gideon Welles, of
Connecticut, for Secretary of the Navy; Montgomery Blair, of
Maryland, for Postmaster-General; and Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana,
for Secretary of the Interior, were finally chosen. When people
complained, as they sometimes did, that by this arrangement the
cabinet consisted of four men who had been Democrats in the old
days, and only three who had been Whigs, Lincoln smiled his wise,
humorous smile and answered that he himself had been a Whig, and
would always be there to make matters even. It is not likely that
this exact list was in his mind on the night of the November
election; but the principal names in it most certainly were. To
some of these gentlemen he offered their appointments by letter.
Others he asked to visit him in Springfield to talk the matter
over. Much delay and some misunderstanding occurred before the
list was finally completed: but when he sent it to the Senate, on
the day after his inauguration, it was practically the one he had
in his mind from the beginning.
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