ingle instance, mentally committed
myself to an appointment; and as that relates to an important office
in your State, I have concluded to mention it to you--under strict
injunctions of secrecy, however. If I am not induced by public
considerations to change my purpose, Hiram Barney will be collector of
the port of New York."[729]

[Footnote 729: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
612.]

To Weed, Barney's name aroused no agreeable memories. At the formation
of the Republican party he had found it easier to affiliate with
Lucius Robinson and David Dudley Field than to act in accord with the
Whig leader, and the result at Chicago had emphasised this
independence. Too politic, however, to antagonise the appointment, and
too wary to indorse it, Weed replied that prior to the Chicago
convention he had known Barney very slightly, but that, if what he had
learned of him since was true, Barney was entitled to any office he
asked for. "He has not asked for this or any other office," said
Lincoln, quickly; "nor does he know of my intention."[730]

[Footnote 730: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2,
pp. 612, 613.]

If the President-elect failed to draw out the adroit New Yorker, he
had tactfully given notice of his intention not to be controlled by
him. A political boss, outside his own State, usually bears the
reputation that home opponents give him, and, although Weed was never
so bad as painted by his adversaries, he had long been a chief with an
odious notoriety. Apparently disinterested, and always refusing to
seek or to accept office himself, he loved power, and for years,
whenever Whig or Republican party was ascendant in New York, his
ambition to prescribe its policy, direct its movements, and dictate
the men who might hold office, had been discreetly but imperiously
exercised, until his influence was viewed with abhorrence by many and
with distrust by the country.[731] It is doubtful if Lincoln's opinion
corresponded with the accepted one,[732] but his desire to have some
avenue of information respecting New York affairs opened to him other
than through the Weed machine, made the President bold to declare his
independence at the outset.

[Footnote 731: Gideon Welles, _Lincoln and Seward_, p. 22.

"In pecuniary matters Weed was generous to a fault while poor; he is
said to be less so since he became rich.... I cannot doubt, however,
that if he had never seen Wall Street or Washi