e, and worshipped
Lincoln. To Seward, who played first and last a notable part in history,
and who all this time conducted foreign affairs under Lincoln without any
mishap in the end, one tribute is due. When he had not a master it is
said that his abilities were made useless by his egotism; yet it can be
seen that, with his especial cause to be jealous of Lincoln, he could not
even conceive how men let private jealousy divide them in the performance
of duty.

It was otherwise with the ablest man in the Cabinet. Salmon P. Chase
must really have been a good man in the days before he fell in love with
his own goodness. Lincoln and the country had confidence in his
management of the Treasury, and Lincoln thought more highly of his
general ability than of that of any other man about him. He, for his
part, distrusted and despised Lincoln. Those who read Lincoln's
important letters and speeches see in him at once a great gentleman;
there were but few among the really well-educated men of America who made
much of his lacking some of the minor points of gentility to which most
of them were born; but of these few Chase betrayed himself as one. At
the beginning of 1864 Chase was putting it about that he had himself no
wish to be President, but--; that of course he was loyal to Mr. Lincoln,
but--; and so forth. He had, as indeed he deserved, admirers who wished
he should be President, and early in the year some of them expressed this
wish in a manifesto. Chase wrote to Lincoln that this was not his own
doing; Lincoln replied that he himself knew as little of these things "as
my friends will allow me to know." To those who spoke to him of Chase's
intrigues he only said that Chase would in some ways make a very good
President, and he hoped they would never have a worse President than he.
The movement in favour of Chase collapsed very soon, and it evidently had
no effect on Lincoln. Chase, however, was beginning to foster grievances
of his own against Lincoln. These related always to appointments in the
service of the Treasury. He professed a horror of party influences in
appointments, and imputed corrupt motives to Lincoln in such matters. He
shared the sound ideas of the later civil service reformers, though he
was far too easily managed by a low class of flatterers to have been of
the least use in carrying them out. Lincoln would certainly not at that
crisis have permitted strife over civil service reform, but some o