THE CABINET OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Mr. Blair was appointed as a citizen of Maryland. This gave serious
offense to many of Mr. Lincoln's most valued supporters, and was
especially distasteful to the Union men of Maryland, with Henry
Winter Davis at their head. They regarded Mr. Blair as a non-
resident, as not in any sense identified with them, and as disposed
from the outset to foment disturbance where harmony was especially
demanded. Mr. Bates had been appointed from Missouri largely by
the influence of Francis P. Blair, Jr.; and the border-State
Republicans were dissatisfied that the only two members of the
Cabinet from the slave States had been appointed apparently without
any general consultation among those who were best fitted to give
the President advice on so important a matter. The extreme men in
the Republican party, of the type of Benjamin F. Wade and Owen
Lovejoy, believed that the Cabinet was so constituted as to insure
what they termed "a disgraceful surrender to the South." It was
a common saying at the time in Washington, among the radical
Republicans, that Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet did not contain three as
absolute and strong defenders of the Union as Dix, Holt, and Stanton,
who had just retired with Mr. Buchanan. Thaddeus Stevens, with
his accustomed sharpness of speech, said the Cabinet was composed
of an assortment of rivals whom the President appointed from
courtesy, one stump-speaker from Indiana, and two representatives
of the Blair family.

In the seven States which constituted the original Southern
Confederacy, the flag of the United States was flying at only three
points on the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. The army of the
United States still held Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston;
Fort Pickens, opposite the Pensacola Navy Yard; and Key West, the
extreme southern point of Florida. Every other fort, arsenal, dock-
yard, mint, custom-house, and court-house had been seized by the
Confederacy, and turned to hostile use. Fort Moultrie, Castle
Pinckney, and the United-States arsenal at Charleston had been
seized by the troops of South Carolina; Forts Jackson and Pulaski,
and the United-States arsenal at Augusta, by the troops of Georgia;
the Chattahoochee and St. Augustine arsenals and the Florida forts,
by the troops of that State; the arsenal at Baton Rouge, and Forts
Jackson and St. Philip, together with the New-Orleans mint and
custom-house, by t