Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [187]
Bates told Lincoln that if “peace and order prevailed in the country,” he would decline the honor much as he had refused the post of secretary of war under President Fillmore in 1850. Only two months earlier, acknowledging in his diary that “everybody expects Mr. Lincoln to offer me one of his Departments,” he had vowed to decline the position. “My pecuniary circumstances (barely competent) and my settled domestic habits make it very undesirable for me to be in high office with low pay—it subjects a man to great temptations to live above his income, and thus become dishonest; and if he have the courage to live economically, it subjects his family to ridicule.”
With the country “in trouble and danger,” however, he “felt it his duty to sacrifice his personal inclinations, and if he could, to contribute his labor and influence to the restoration of peace in, and the preservation of his country.” Lincoln knew he had his man, either for U.S. Attorney General, or, if Seward should decline, for secretary of state. When Bates suggested several days later that “a good effect might be produced on the public mind—especially in the border slave States” by leaking the news of his offer, Lincoln agreed. “Let a little editorial appear in the Missouri Democrat,” he wrote Bates, revealing that he had accepted a place in the cabinet, though “it is not yet definitely settled which Department.” The announcement of Bates’s appointment received positive marks almost everywhere. Indeed, the appointment of Bates would require the least maneuvering of all Lincoln’s selections.
Meanwhile, after receiving Lincoln’s offer, Seward consulted Weed, as he had at every critical juncture in his long career. Weed had already established a strong working relationship with Leonard Swett, who had assured him after the election that “we all feel that New York and the friends of Seward have acted nobly…. We should be exceedingly glad to know your wishes and your views, and to serve you in any way in our power.” Weed now contacted Swett to secure an invitation to discuss Seward’s thoughts on the design of the cabinet with Lincoln. “Mr. Lincoln would be very glad to see you,” Swett informed Weed on December 10. “He asks me to tell you so…. Mr. Lincoln wants your advice about his Cabinet, and the general policy of his administration.”
With Weed en route to Illinois, Seward wrote to inform Lincoln of his conversations with Weed, who would convey his “present unsettled view of the subject upon which you so kindly wrote me a few days ago.” Weed arrived in Springfield on December 20. For weeks, reporters representing New York papers had been scanning the guest lists of the local Springfield hotels for signatures of any of their fellow New Yorkers. They were about to conclude that the Eastern establishment was deliberately shunning Lincoln when they uncovered the name of Thurlow Weed on the register at the Chenery House: “The renowned chief of the Albany lobby—the maker and destroyer of political fortunes—the unrivaled party manager—the once almighty Weed,” a newspaper in Rochester noted, has “migrated towards the rising sun!”
Lincoln and Weed settled down opposite each other in Lincoln’s parlor, with Swett and Davis in attendance. Swett would never forget the image of the two men, who “took to each other” so strongly, both “remarkable in stature and appearance,” with “rough, strongly marked features,” both having “risen by their own exertions from humble relations to the control of a nation.” Despite their mutual respect, Lincoln’s resolve regarding his cabinet choices undoubtedly dismayed Weed, who had assumed that he and Seward would have a critical role in the composition of the entire body. To Lincoln’s appointment of Bates, Weed did not object; neither did