be passed by.
Letters are the safest basis of action in appointments to office.
Personal appeals are made most usually by interested parties.

At the time of the disasters to Pope and McClellan, Mr. Chase was
demoralized completely. He said to me:

"We have only to wait for the end."

He took me to the President, and said that he could take no part in
the appointments. In that period Mr. Chase was very bitter in his
criticisms of the President. He thought him very slow in regard to
emancipation. Of this opinion there was a formidable knot around
Washington, Mr. Chase and Mr. Sumner being at their head. Indeed,
their opinion in that particular was shared by many, myself among them,
but I never lost confidence in the purposes of Mr. Lincoln, and I well
knew that the way of safety was to maintain the closest relations with
him. No one who knew him had any ground to doubt his good intentions.
The truth was, that Mr. Chase was a candidate for the Presidency
whenever he had the courage to believe in the preservation of the
Government.

From July to the end of December, 1862, I went to the office before
breakfast, then during the day, and then again in the evening. My only
exercise was a ride on horseback after office hours and before dinner.
When Pope's army was driven within the entrenchments of Washington,
General Banks was made military commander of the district. I was then
living in a house at the corner of G and Twenty-first Streets, which my
friend Mr. Hooper tendered me during the recess of Congress upon the
condition that I would retain, pay and maintain his servants. Among
them was his cook, Monaky, who had been cook for Mr. Webster. When
Fletcher Webster was killed, she was in great grief. I invited General
Banks to make his quarters with me, and I had thus some means of
knowing the condition of affairs in the army and around the district.

While he was with me, we called upon General Hooker at the asylum, the
Insane Hospital, on the east side of the east branch of the Potomac
River, to which place he had been sent to be treated for a wound in his
leg, which he had received at the Battle of Antietam. He was violent
in his denunciation of McClellan for not using his entire force, and
for not following the enemy--claiming that the whole body might have
been destroyed. Barring his violence of language, and the impropriety
of criticising his commander, there can be no doubt of the justice of
what he