t, could hardly
fail to find their task an uphill one when ideas so naive and fatuous as
these prevailed. It is no wonder that General Grant recorded in his
Memoirs the opinion that the great difficulty with the Army of the
Potomac during the first year of the war was its proximity to
Washington; that the conditions made success practically impossible; and
that neither he, nor General Sherman, nor any officer known to him,
could have succeeded in General McClellan's place, under the conditions
that then existed. Gradually, and by slow and often painful experience,
a clearer conception of the meaning and methods of war prevailed. In
this, as in so many things, Lincoln's insight was first and surest. By
patience, tact, shrewdness, firmness, and diplomatic skill, he held the
Cabinet together and stimulated its members to their best efforts for
the common cause.

But the personal frictions and dissensions in the Cabinet, and the more
or less meddlesome attitude of leaders in the Senate and the House, at
times sorely tried the strength and patience of the harassed President,
compelling him to act the part of peacemaker, and sometimes of judge and
arbiter as well. At one time Secretary Stanton threatened to resign; and
Chase declared that in that case he should go with him. Stanton and
Welles were in frequent antagonism, Welles stating in his Diary that
Stanton assumed, or tried to assume, that the Navy should be subject to
the direction of the War Department. Seward was "meddlesome" toward
other departments; "runs to the President two or three times a day;
wants to be Premier," etc., says Welles. "Between Seward and Chase there
was perpetual rivalry and mutual but courtly distrust; they entered the
Cabinet as rivals, and in cold courtesy so continued." The most serious
of these Cabinet embroglios occurred late in December of 1862, while
Lincoln was well-nigh overwhelmed by Burnside's dreadful repulse at
Fredericksburg. The gist of the affair, as given by Mr. Welles, is that
the opposition to Seward in the Senate grew to such a point that a
committee was appointed to wait on the President and request Seward's
removal from the office of Secretary of State. The President, Mr. Welles
tells us, was "shocked and grieved" at this demonstration. He asked all
the members of his Cabinet to meet the Senate committee with him. All
the members of the Cabinet were present except Seward, who had already
sent the President his resignation.