on that of their friend Lyman Trumbull. Certain it is that none
of the three thereafter had any doubts about putting the military men
in their place. All the error of their own view previous to Bull Run was
forgotten. Wade and Chandler, especially, when military questions were
in dispute, felt that no one possibly could know more of the subject
than did the men who stopped the rout in the narrow road beyond Fairfax.

Three of those picnickers who missed their guess on Bull Run Sunday,
Wade, Chandler and Trumbull, were destined to important parts in the
stern years that were to come. Before the close of the year 1861 the
three made a second visit to the army; and this time they kept together.
To that second visit momentous happenings may be traced. How it came
about must be fully understood.

Two of the three, Wade and Chandler, were temperamentally incapable of
understanding Lincoln. Both were men of fierce souls; each had but
a very limited experience. Wade had been a country lawyer in Ohio;
Chandler, a prosperous manufacturer in Michigan. They were party men by
instinct, blind to the faults of their own side, blind to the virtues
of their enemies. They were rabid for the control of the government by
their own organized machine.

Of Chandler, in Michigan, it was said that he "carried the Republican
organization in his breeches pocket"; partly through control of the
Federal patronage, which Lincoln frankly conceded to him, partly through
a "judicious use of money."(3) Chandler's first clash with Lincoln was
upon the place that the Republican machine was to hold in the conduct of
the war.

From the beginning Lincoln was resolved that the war should not be
merely a party struggle. Even before he was inaugurated, he said that
he meant to hold the Democrats "close to the Administration on the
naked Union issue."(4) He had added, "We must make it easy for them" to
support the government "because we can't live through the case without
them." This was the foundation of his attempt--so obvious between the
lines of the first message--to create an all-parties government. This,
Chandler violently opposed. Violence was always Chandler's note, so much
so that a scornful opponent once called him "Xantippe in pants."

Lincoln had given Chandler a cause of offense in McClellan's elevation
to the head of the army.* McClellan was a Democrat. There can be little
doubt that Lincoln took the fact into account in selecting him. Shortly