incoln's Cooper Institute speech, and now, after election, he thought
Chase, as secretary of state, would be best for the country.
Lincoln's reply of "a few lines," convincing his correspondent "that
whatever selection you make it will be made conscientiously,"
contained no word about Barney. Other letters, or parties personally
interested in Barney, may have passed between the President-elect and
Bryant, or Chase. Indeed, Lincoln confessed to Weed that he had
received telegrams and visits from prominent Republicans, warning him
against the Albany editor's efforts to forestall important state
appointments, but no clue is left to identify them. The mystery
deepens, too, since, whatever was done, came without Barney's
suggestion or knowledge.[739]

[Footnote 736: New York _Tribune_, editorial, April 2, 1861.]

[Footnote 737: "'It was worth the journey to the East,' said Mr.
Lincoln, 'to see such a man as Bryant.'"--John Bigelow, _Life of
William Cullen Bryant_, p. 218.]

[Footnote 738: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 257.]

[Footnote 739: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
613.]

Hiram Barney, a native of Jefferson County, a graduate of Union
College in 1834, and the head of a well-known law firm, was a lawyer
of high character and a Republican of Democratic antecedents, who had
stood with Greeley and Bryant in opposing Seward at Chicago, and whose
appointment to the most important federal office in the State meant
mischief for Weed.[740] In its effect it was not unlike President
Garfield's selection of William H. Robertson for the same place; and,
although it did not at once result so disastrously to Weed as
Robertson's appointment did to Conkling twenty years later, it gave
the editor's adversaries vantage ground, which so seriously crippled
the Weed machine, that, in the succeeding November, George Opdyke, a
personal enemy of Thurlow Weed,[741] was nominated and elected mayor
of New York City.

[Footnote 740: "Hiram Barney belongs to the Van Buren Democratic
Buffalo Free-soil wing of the Republican party. He studied law with
C.C. Cambreling and practised it with Benjamin F. Butler. For
President he voted for Jackson, for Van Buren in 1840 and 1848, for
Hale in 1852, and for Fremont and Lincoln. He was also a delegate to
the Buffalo convention of 1848; so that as an out-and-out Van Buren
Democratic Free-soil Republican, Barney is a better specimen than Van
Buren himself."--New