s an intolerable
man. He attacked all manner of people causelessly and violently, and
earned implacable dislike from the Radicals In his party. Then he
frankly asked Lincoln to dismiss him whenever it was convenient. There
came a time when Lincoln's re-election was in great peril, and he might,
it was urged, have made it sure by dismissing Blair. It is significant
that Lincoln then refused to promote his own cause by seeming to
sacrifice Blair, but later on, when his own election was fairly certain,
but a greater degree of unity in the Republican party was to be gained,
did ask Blair to go; (Blair's quarrels, it should be added, had become
more and more outrageous). So he went and immediately flung himself with
enthusiasm into the advocacy of Lincoln's cause. All the men who left
Lincoln remained his friends, except one who will shortly concern us. Of
Lincoln's more important ministers Welles did his work for the Navy
industriously but unnoted. Stanton, on the other hand, and Lincoln's
relations with Stanton are the subjects of many pages of literature.
These two curious and seemingly incompatible men hit upon extraordinary
methods of working together. It can be seen that Lincoln's chief care in
dealing with his subordinates was to give support and to give free play
to any man whose heart was in his work. In countless small matters he
would let Stanton disobey him and flout him openly. ("Did Stanton tell
you I was a damned fool? Then I expect I must be one, for he is almost
always right and generally says what he means.") But every now and then,
when he cared much about his own wish, he would step in and crush Stanton
flat. Crowds of applicants to Lincoln with requests of a kind that must
be granted sparingly were passed on to Stanton, pleased with the
President, or mystified by his sadly observing that he had not much
influence with this Administration but hoped to have more with the next.
Stanton always refused them. He enjoyed doing it. Yet it seems a low
trick to have thus indulged his taste for unpopularity, till one
discovers that, when Stanton might have been blamed seriously and
unfairly, Lincoln was very careful to shoulder the blame himself. The
gist of their mutual dealings was that the hated Stanton received a
thinly disguised, but quite unfailing support, and that hated or
applauded, ill or well, wrong in this detail and right in that, he abode
in his department and drove, and drove, and drov