As the party filed into the room he preceded them, and said to the President, in a low voice:

"These gentlemen from New York have come on to see the Secretary of the Treasury about our new loan. As bankers they are obliged to hold our national securities. I can vouch for their patriotism and loyalty, for, as the good Book says, 'Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.""

To which Mr. Lincoln quickly replied: "There is another text, Mr. McCulloch, I remember, that might equally apply: 'Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.''

When Attorney-General Bates resigned in 1864, after the resignation of Postmaster-General Blair in that year, the Cabinet was left without a Southern member. A few days before the meeting of the Supreme Court, which then met in December, Mr. Lincoln sent for Titian G. Coffey, and said: "My Cabinet has shrunk up North, and I must find a Southern man. I suppose if the twelve apostles were to be chosen nowadays, the shrieks of locality would have to be heeded."

Montgomery Blair was not popular with the Union people of the North. The public distrust

is strikingly illustrated by the following anecdote from the reminiscences of Henry Ward Beecher: "There was some talk, early in 1864, of a sort of compromise with the South. Blair told the President he was satisfied that, if he could be put in communication with some of the leading men of the South in some way or other, some benefit would accrue. Lincoln had sent a delegation to meet Alexander H. Stephens, and that was all the North knew. We were all very much excited over that. The war lasted so long, and I was afraid Lincoln would be so anxious for peace, and I was afraid he would accept something that would be of advantage to the South, so I went to Washington and called upon him. 'Mr. Lincoln, I come to you to know whether the public interest will permit you to explain to me what this Southern commission means? I am in an embarrassing position as editor and do not want to step in the dark.' Well, he listened very patiently, and looked up to the ceiling for a few moments, and said, 'Well, I am almost of a mind to show you all the documents.'

66 6

'Well, Mr. Lincoln, I should like to see them if it is proper.' He went to his little secretary and came out and handed me a little card as long as my finger and an inch wide, and on that was written:

An editorial in the Ne posing Lincoln's renomina called out from him the fo

"A traveler on the fron of his reckoning one night region. A terrific thunderto his trouble. He floun horse at length gave out. him the only clue to his thunder were frightful. O to crash the earth beneath his knees. By no means petition was short and to if it is all the same to you light and a little less noise!

When the time came a 1864 for nominations to b dential office by the Repul was prominently mentione

contents, and vociferousness gave color to a support that subsequent events proved he did not have. John T. Morse, Jr., in his Life of Abraham Lincoln, tells the following story:

"At Cleveland on the appointed day the 'mass convention' assembled, only the mass was wanting. It nominated Fremont for the Presidency and Gen. John Cochrane for the Vice-Presidency; and thus again the Constitution was ignored by these malcontents, for both these gentlemen were citizens of New York, and therefore the important delegation from that State could lawfully vote for only one of them. Really the best result which the convention achieved was that it called forth a bit of wit from the President. Some one remarked to him that, instead of the expected thousands, only about four hundred persons had assembled. He turned to the Bible which, say Nicolay and Hay, 'commonly lay on his desk,' and read the verse: 'And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.'"

"There is but one contingency that can cause your defeat for a second term," one of Lincoln's

friends said to him in 1863, "and that is Grant's capture of Richmond and his nomination as an opposing candidate.”

"Well," replied Mr. Lincoln, shrewdly, "I feel very much about that as the man felt who said he didn't want to die particularly, but if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he would like to die of."

Colonel McClure, the Pennsylvania journalist, tells this regarding his attitude toward the candidacy of Mr. Chase for the Presidency:

"By the way," said Mr. Lincoln, "how would it do if I were to decline Chase?"

The Colonel inquired how it could be done. "Well,” replied Lincoln, "I don't know exactly how it might be done, but that reminds me of a story of two Democratic candidates for senator in 'Egypt,' Illinois, in its early political times. That section of Illinois was almost solidly Democratic, as you know, and nobody but Democrats were candidates for office. Two Democratic candidates for senator met each other in joint debate, from day to day, and gradually became more and more exasperated at each other, until their discussions were simply disgraceful wrangles, and they both became ashamed of them. They finally agreed that either should