Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [403]
Meanwhile, the smoldering feud between Chase and the Blairs erupted into full public view. With the army in winter quarters the previous January, Frank Blair had resigned his commission and retaken his seat in Congress. He intended to return to Sherman’s command in time for the march to Atlanta, but first, he had a score to settle with Chase. A Chase partisan had publicly accused Blair of swindling the government by charging $8,000 for a personal shipment of liquor and tobacco. Blair knew the document in question was spurious and suspected that it had been forged in the Treasury Department. He asked a congressional committee to investigate the matter. The resulting report fully exonerated Blair. The accusing document was, indeed, a forgery penned by a Treasury agent. Although there was no suggestion of Chase’s personal involvement, Blair waited for the issuance of the committee’s report before rising to speak on the floor.
Addressing a packed audience the day before his scheduled departure for Sherman’s army, he began by calmly summarizing the report’s findings. His self-control swiftly vanished, however, as he turned his anger on Chase. “These dogs have been set on me by their master, and since I have whipped them back into their kennel I mean to hold their master responsible for this outrage and not the curs who have been set upon me.” Speaker Colfax admonished Blair to stick to the committee report, but Blair’s supporters insisted that he be allowed to continue. He accused Chase of corruption, treachery against Lincoln, lack of patriotism, and sordid ambition for the presidency.
Elizabeth Blair, present in the galleries, believed the speech “a complete triumph” in the short run but worried about its livid tone. “Anger is the poorest of counselors,” she conceded, “& revenge is suicide.” She was right to worry, for the speech inflamed the ongoing war between Chase and Blair that would end by damaging both men. Chase’s friends reacted quickly, labeling the accusations against the treasury secretary “mendacious slanders.”
Gideon Welles considered the speech “violent and injudicious” and feared that it would ultimately hurt the president. The wise navy secretary was dismayed by the continuing feud between Chase and the Blairs, believing both sides shared the blame. “Chase is deficient in magnanimity and generosity. The Blairs have both, but they have strong resentments. Warfare with them is open, bold and unsparing. With Chase it is silent, persistent, but regulated with discretion.”
Chase was told about the speech later that night as he boarded a train to the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore. His friend Congressman Albert Riddle joined him in his private car. “He was alone,” Riddle recalled, “and in a frightful rage, and controlled himself with difficulty while he explained the cause. The recital in a hoarse, constrained voice, seemed to rekindle his anger and aggravate his intensity. The spacious car fairly trembled under his feet.” Chase felt certain that “all this, including the speech, had been done with the cordial approval of the President.” Ohio congressman James Garfield agreed with this assessment. He considered Frank Blair Lincoln’s “creature,” sent to the House for the “special purpose” of destroying Chase’s reputation. With this accomplished, Garfield charged, Lincoln would simply renew Blair’s commission and return him to the front, “thus ratifying all he said and did while here.” Chase told Riddle that unless Lincoln repudiated Blair, he would feel honor-bound once again to tender his resignation.
Riddle and another friend of Chase’s, Rufus Spalding, called on the president. They warned him that “Chase’s abrupt resignation now would be equal in its effects to a severe set-back of the army under Grant.” Explaining that the coincidence of Blair’s vicious speech and the president’s renewal of his commission “seemed as if planned for dramatic effect,