Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [319]
The disappointed senators now turned their wrath upon Chase, whose duplicitous behavior infuriated them. When Collamer was asked how Chase could have presented such a different face when confronted in the meeting, the Vermont senator answered succinctly, “He lied.” Lincoln agreed that Chase had been disingenuous, but not on that night. On the contrary, after months of spreading false stories about Seward and the cabinet, Chase had finally been compelled to tell the truth! Lincoln’s political dexterity had enabled him to calm the crisis and expose the duplicity of his secretary of the treasury.
The next day, Welles paid an early call on the president. He said that he had “pondered the events” of the previous night and concluded that it would be a grievous mistake for Lincoln to accept Seward’s resignation. The senators’ presumption in their criticisms of Seward, “real or imaginary,” was “inappropriate and wrong.” In order to “maintain the rights and independence of the Executive,” Lincoln must reject the senator’s attempts to interfere with internal cabinet matters. Welles hoped that Seward would not press Lincoln to accept his resignation. Delighted by these comments, Lincoln asked Welles to talk with Seward.
Welles went at once to Seward’s house, where he found Stanton conversing with the secretary of state. While Stanton had probably joined Chase in airing his frustrations, most particularly when McClellan was restored to command, he had come to see the necessity for solidarity. The cabinet, he said, was like a window. “Suppose you allowed it to be understood that passers-by might knock out one pane of glass—just one at a time—how long do you think any panes would be left in it?”
When Stanton departed, Welles told Seward that he had advised the president not to accept his resignation. This “greatly pleased” Seward, who had been distraught over the whole episode. In short order, another visitor knocked on Seward’s door and Monty Blair entered, also to object to the idea of Seward’s resignation. So Lincoln had brought the cabinet to rally around one of their own. Like family members who would fault one another within the confines of their own household while fiercely rejecting external criticism, the cabinet put aside its quarrel with Seward, based largely on jealousy over his intimacy with Lincoln, to resist the interference of outsiders.
Still, Lincoln’s troubles were not over. The news of Seward’s offer of resignation had produced widespread comment, particularly among radicals who hoped that his departure would signal a first step toward a reconstructed cabinet purged of conservative influences. To refuse Seward’s offer now that its tender was public knowledge would be interpreted as a slap against the radicals. The delicate balance Lincoln had struggled to maintain in his cabinet would be damaged.
Ironically, Salmon Chase unwittingly provided a perfect solution to Lincoln’s difficulty. When Welles returned to Lincoln’s office after speaking with Seward, he found Chase and Stanton waiting to see the president. Humiliated after the previous night, Chase had decided to hand in his own resignation. Word had already leaked out that he had been instrumental in the movement to remove Seward “for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining control in the cabinet.” Were he to remain after Seward’s departure, he told a friend, he would face the hostility of Seward’s many friends. Yet a public offer to join Seward in resigning would put the onus on Lincoln to request Chase’s continued service and “relieve him from imputations of Seward’s friends and clear his future course of difficulties.”
Discovering Chase, Stanton, and Welles in his office, Lincoln invited them all to sit with him before the fire. Chase said he “had been painfully affected by the meeting,” which had come as “a total surprise” to him.