Yield larger things to which you can show no
more than equal right; and yield lesser ones though clearly your
own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in
contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the
bite."
It was this willingness of his to give up the "lesser things,"
and even the things to which he could claim an equal right, which
kept peace in his cabinet, made up of men of strong wills and
conflicting natures. Their devotion to the Union, great as it
was, would not have sufficed in such a strangely assorted
official family; but his unfailing kindness and good sense led
him to overlook many things that another man might have regarded
as deliberate insults; while his great tact and knowledge of
human nature enabled him to bring out the best in people about
him, and at times to turn their very weaknesses into sources of
strength. It made it possible for him to keep the regard of every
one of them. Before he had been in office a month it had
transformed Secretary Seward from his rival into his lasting
friend. It made a warm friend out of the blunt, positive,
hot-tempered Edwin M. Stanton, who became Secretary of War in
place of Mr. Cameron. He was a man of strong will and great
endurance, and gave his Department a record for hard and
effective work that it would be difficult to equal. Many stories
are told of the disrespect he showed the President, and the
cross-purposes at which they labored.
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