posed he had a right to have the advice of
all the members of his cabinet. This reply ended the matter, and as
far as is known, neither of them ever mentioned the subject again. Mr.
Lincoln put the papers away in an envelope, and no word of the affair
came to the public until years after both men were dead. In one mind
at least there was no longer a doubt that the cabinet had a master. Mr.
Seward recognized the President's kindly forbearance, and repaid it by
devotion and personal friendship until the day of his tragic death.

If, after this experience, the Secretary of State needed any further
proof of Mr. Lincoln's ability to rule, it soon came to him, for during
the first months of the war matters abroad claimed the attention of
the cabinet, and with these also the untried western man showed himself
better fitted to deal than his more experienced advisers. Many of the
countries of Europe, especially France and England, wished the South
to succeed. France because of plans that Emperor Napoleon III had for
founding French colonies on American soil, and England because such
success would give her free cotton for her mills and factories. England
became so friendly toward the rebels that Mr. Seward, much irritated,
wrote a despatch on May 21, 1861, to Charles Francis Adams, the American
Minister at London, which, if it had been sent as he wrote it, would
almost certainly have brought on war between the two countries. It set
forth justly and with courage what the United States government would
and would not endure from foreign powers during the war with the South,
but it had been penned in a heat of indignation, and was so blunt and
exasperating as to suggest intentional disrespect. When Mr. Seward read
it to the President the latter at once saw this, and taking it from his
Secretary of State kept it by him for further consideration. A second
reading showed him that his first impression was correct. Thereupon the
frontier lawyer, taking his pen, went carefully over the whole
dispatch, and by his corrections so changed the work of the trained and
experienced statesman as entirely to remove its offensive tone, without
in the least altering its force or courage.

Once again during 1861 the country was in serious danger of war with
England, and the action of President Lincoln at this time proved not
only that he had the will to be just, even when his own people were
against him, but had the skill to gain real advantage from wh