portrait to a mere outline, wavering across a background of
political details. The most recent study of Seward** surely reveals
between the lines the doubtfulness of the author about pushing his
points home. The different sides of the man are hard to reconcile. Now
he seemed frank and honest; again subtle and insincere. As an active
politician in the narrow sense, he should have been sagacious and
astute, yet he displayed at the crisis of his life the most absolute
fatuity. At times he had a buoyant and puerile way of disregarding
fact and enveloping himself in a world of his own imagining. He could
bluster, when he wished, like any demagogue; and yet he could be
persuasive, agreeable, and even personally charming.

*Frederic Bancroft, "Life of William H. Seward".

** Gamaliel Bradford, "Union Portraits".

But of one thing with regard to Seward, in the first week of March,
1861, there can be no doubt: he thought himself a great statesman--and
he thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan." He conceived his role in the new
administration to involve a subtle and patient manipulation of his
childlike superior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his spell
and insensibly become his figurehead; that he, Seward, could save the
country and would go down to history a statesman above compare, he took
for granted. Nor can he fairly be called conceited, either; that is part
of his singularity.

Lincoln's Cabinet was, as Seward said, a compound body. With a view to
strengthening his position, Lincoln had appointed to cabinet positions
all his former rivals for the Republican nomination. Besides Seward,
there was Chase as Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron of
Pennsylvania as Secretary of War; Edward Bates of Missouri as
Attorney-General. The appointment of Montgomery Blair of Maryland as
Postmaster-General was intended to placate the border Slave States. The
same motive dictated the later inclusion of James Speed of Kentucky in
the Cabinet. The Black-Stanton wing of the Democrats was represented in
the Navy Department by Gideon Welles, and in course of time in the War
Department also, when Cameron resigned and Stanton succeeded him. The
West of that day was represented by Caleb B. Smith of Indiana.

Seward disapproved of the composition of the Cabinet so much that,
almost at the last moment, he withdrew his acceptance of the State
Department. It was Lincoln's gentleness of argument which overcame his
reluctance to serve