Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [268]
Cameron was devastated, knowing that he would never recover from the scandal. Lincoln, however, made a great personal effort to assuage his pain and humiliation. He wrote a long public letter to Congress, explaining that the unfortunate contracts were spawned by the emergency situation facing the government in the immediate aftermath of Fort Sumter. Lincoln declared that he and his entire cabinet “were at least equally responsible with [Cameron] for whatever error, wrong, or fault was committed.”
Cameron would never forget this generous act. Filled with gratitude and admiration, he would become, Nicolay and Hay observed, “one of the most intimate and devoted of Lincoln’s personal friends.” He appreciated the courage it took for Lincoln to share the blame at a time when everyone else had deserted him. Most other men in Lincoln’s situation, Cameron wrote, “would have permitted an innocent man to suffer rather than incur responsibility.” Lincoln was not like most other men, as each cabinet member, including the new war secretary, would soon come to understand.
On his first day in office, the energetic, hardworking Stanton instituted “an entirely new régime” in the War Department. Cameron’s department had been so inundated by office seekers and politicians that officials had little time to answer letters or file telegraphs they received. As a result, requests for military supplies were often delayed for weeks. Stanton decreed that “letters and written communications will be attended to the first thing in the morning when they are received, and will have precedence over all other business.” While Cameron had welcomed congressmen and senators every day but Sunday, Stanton announced that the War Department would be closed to all business unrelated to military matters from Tuesdays through Fridays. Congressmen and senators would be received on Saturdays; the general public on Mondays.
Stanton quickly removed many of Cameron’s people and surrounded himself with men much like himself, full of passion, devotion, and drive. He made it clear from the beginning that he would not tolerate unmerited requests for even the smallest job. The day after he took office, Stanton later recalled, he met with a man he instinctively judged to be “one of those indescribable half loafers, half gentlemen,” who carried with him “a card from Mrs. Lincoln, asking that the man be made a commissary.” Stanton was furious. He ripped up the note and sent the man away. The very next day, the man returned with an official request from Mary that he be given the appointment. Stanton did not budge, dismissing the job seeker once again. That afternoon, Stanton called on Mrs. Lincoln. He told her that “in the midst of a great war for national existence,” his “first duty is to the people” and his “next duty is to protect your husband’s honor, and your own.” If he appointed unqualified men simply to return favors, it would “strike at the very root of all confidence.” Mary understood his argument completely. “Mr. Stanton you are right,” she told him, “and I will never ask you for anything again.” True to her word, Stanton affirmed, “she never did.”
Under Stanton’s altered regime, the War Department opened early in the morning and the gas lamps remained lit late into the night. “As his carriage turned from Pennsylvania Avenue into Seventeenth Street,” one of his clerks recalled, “the door-keeper on watch would put his head inside and cry, in a low, warning tone, ‘The Secretary!’ The word was passed along and around till the whole building was traversed by it, and for a minute or two there was a shuffling of feet and a noise of opening and shutting of doors, as the stragglers and loungers everywhere fled to their stations.”
Stanton kept his meetings brief and pointed. He was “fluent without wordiness,” George Templeton Strong wrote, “and above all, earnest, warm-hearted, and large-hearted.