ld intercourse with the
disloyal group among the Democrats, were "two ambassadors" from the
Confederacy seeking an audience of Lincoln. He wrote to Lincoln, begging
him to receive them. Lincoln caused Greeley to go to Niagara and see the
supposed ambassadors himself. He gave him written authority to bring to
him any person with proper credentials, provided, as he made plain in
terms that perhaps were blunt, that the basis of any negotiation should
include the recognition of the Union and the abolition of slavery. The
persons whom Greeley saw had no authority to treat about anything.
Greeley in his irritation now urged Lincoln to convey to Jefferson Davis
through these mysterious men his readiness to receive them if they were
accredited. In other words, the North was to begin suing for peace--a
thing clearly unwise, which Lincoln refused. Greeley now involved
Lincoln in a tangled controversy to which he gave such a turn that,
unless Lincoln would publish the most passionately pacific of Greeley's
letters, to the great discouragement of the public with whom Greeley
counted, he must himself keep silent on what had passed. He elected to
keep silent while Greeley in his paper criticised him as the person
responsible for the continuance of senseless bloodshed. This was
publicly harmful; and, as for its private bearing, the reputation of
obstinate blood-thirstiness was certain to be painful to Lincoln.

The history of Lincoln's Cabinet has a bearing upon what is to follow.
He ruled his Ministers with undisputed authority, talked with them
collectively upon the easiest terms, spoke to them as a headmaster to his
school when they caballed against one another, kept them in some sort of
unison in a manner which astonished all who knew them. Cameron had had
to retire early; so did the little-known Caleb Smith, who was succeeded
in his unimportant office as Secretary of the Interior by a Mr. Usher,
who seems to have been well chosen. Bates, the Attorney-General,
retired, weary of his work, towards the end of 1864, and Lincoln had the
keen pleasure of appointing James Speed, the brother of that unforgotten
and greatly honoured friend whom he honoured the more for his
contentedness with private station. James Speed himself was in Lincoln's
opinion "an honest man and a gentleman, and one of those well-poised men,
not too common here, who are not spoiled by a big office."

Blair might be regarded as a delightful, or equally a