tion. I believe I can endure
as much as any one; and may be that I can endure enough to make the
experiment successful."[720]

[Footnote 719: _Ibid._, Vol. 3, p. 371.]

[Footnote 720: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 518.]

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WEED MACHINE CRIPPLED

1861

The story of the first forty days of Lincoln's administration is one
of indecent zeal to obtain office. A new party had come into power,
and, in the absence of any suggestion of civil service, patronage was
conceded to the political victors. Office-seekers in large numbers had
visited Washington in 1841 after the election of President Harrison,
and, in the change that followed the triumph of Taylor in 1848,
Seward, then a new senator, complained of their pernicious activity.
Marcy as secretary of state found them no less numerous and insistent
in 1853 when the Whigs again gave way to the Democrats. But never in
the history of the country had such a cloud of applicants settled down
upon the capital of the nation as appeared in 1861. McClure, an
eye-witness of the scene, speaks of the "mobs of office-seekers,"[721]
and Edwin M. Stanton, who still remained in Washington, wrote Buchanan
that "the scramble for office is terrific. Every department is
overrun, and by the time all the patronage is distributed the
Republican party will be dissolved."[722] Schuyler Colfax declared to
his mother that "it makes me heart-sick. All over the country our
party is by the ears, fighting for offices."[723] Seward, writing to
his wife on March 16, speaks of the affliction. "My duties call me to
the White House one, two, or three times a day. The grounds, halls,
stairways, closets, are filled with applicants, who render ingress
and egress difficult."[724] Lincoln himself said: "I seem like one
sitting in a palace, assigning apartments to importunate applicants,
while the structure is on fire and likely soon to perish in
ashes."[725] Stanton is authority for the statement "that Lincoln
takes the precaution of seeing no stranger alone."[726]

[Footnote 721: Alex. K. McClure, _Recollections of Half a Century_, p.
204.]

[Footnote 722: George T. Curtis, _Life of James Buchanan_, Vol. 2, p.
530.]

[Footnote 723: O.B. Hallister, _Life of Colfax_, p. 173.]

[Footnote 724: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 530.]

[Footnote 725: Alex. K. McClure, _Life of Lincoln_, p. 56.]

[Footnote 726: George T. Curtis, _Life of James Buchanan_, V