and an intimate friend of thirty years' standing, came to Washington, in June, 1861, to obtain a position as paymaster in the army. There was every element of personal fitness and propriety in this request: he was thoroughly upright and entirely competent and had been frequently honored by his constituents by repeated election to office. All these cardinal facts, Lincoln well knew, and one might say, that a long course of unbroken intimacy and friendship, super-added to the eminent qualifications of the applicant, should have removed all hesitation about making such an appointment. Major Wilson called on Lincoln, in person, to solicit his appointment; and he told me that Lincoln received him cordially, had an animated conversation with him about old friends and times but that when he suggested the appointment, Lincoln made no reply, but cast down his head, and his face assumed a most gloomy and woe-stricken expression, which lasted for several minutes; after which he resumed conversation in a subdued tone, but made no reference to the appointment: he did, however, appoint him. Lincoln's brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, at whose house Lincoln was married, applied for a similar position. One would suppose that he had the inside track; for he and his wife were domiciled at the White House, and met the President at breakfast, dinner and supper, as well as at the family hearthstone. He, also, was thoroughly qualified for the position, as Lincoln well knew. When the list of paymasters was announced; both Wilson's and Edwards's names appeared, together with my own, to my great surprise, as I had not been an applicant. I sought out these two men to ascertain the nature of the office, etc., and all three of us visited the Paymaster-General's office and procured books and blanks, blank bonds, etc.: the latter of which Edwards, more fortunate than the rest of us, was enabled to perfect in Washington, and reported speedily for duty. He was then, however, informed, (several days having meanwhile elapsed) that he was not a paymaster; that such a name had indeed been on

the original list, but that the President had gone to the Adjutant-General's office and expugned it. The discomfitted party was told by the President, to whom he at once went, in high dudgeon, that he had changed the appointment to that of commissary of subsistence, to escape the imputation of appointing all his brothers-in-law to the higher office and the one in the greatest demand-having previously appointed Dr. Wallace, another brother-in-law, as paymaster.

At the same time one Victor B. Bell was an applicant for this same position; he had been a young Whig member of the legislature and had many titles to Lincoln's favor; but after dancing attendance at the White House for weeks, his only solace was a letter from Lincoln to Gov. Yates asking for a captain's commission in some volunteer regiment.

While Lincoln was not in all social amenities in close accord with the people of Springfield, and not very closely bound in the cords of political concord yet he said on February 11th, 1861, as he parted from them: "For more than a quarter of a century, I have lived among you, and during all that time, I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed. Here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried. To you, my dear friends, I owe all that I have all that I am."

Among other friends, the most firm and constant were Stephen T. Logan and William H. Herndon. The former was the best lawyer in the state, if not in the Northwest, and Lincoln well knew it. Had Lincoln been called upon to select a candidate for Supreme Judge to any other administration, he would have selected Logan against the field, earnestly and enthusiastically. Herndon was Lincoln's Mentor. I never knew closer intimacy to exist between two men than between these two and, besides, Herndon was a man capable of becoming a statesman. The citizens of Springfield were desirous to be honored in the exaltation of

these two great men and finding Lincoln not endowed with the attribute of spontaneity as to them sent on a deputation of its citizens to Washington to urge that Logan be appointed Supreme Judge, and Herndon, Minister to Rome: but he was deaf to their requests, and Springfield was unrepresented in the list of general appointments. He even went into the southern part of the state for a marshal for that district, and let Davis appoint one of his friends as district attorney. In the distribution of favors he avoided all of those dear friends to whom he owed all that he was, with an unfaltering constancy and it was an error (if at all) on the right side.

His most accurate biographer forcibly sums up the reasons which induced this mode of action, on the part of Lincoln: "Mr. Lincoln regarded all public offices within his gift as a sacred trust to be administered for the people, and in no sense a fund upon which he could draw for the payment of private accounts. He never preferred his friends to his enemies; but rather the reverse, as if fearful that he might, by bare possibility, be influenced by some unworthy motive. He was singularly cautious to avoid the imputation of fidelity to his friends, at. the expense of his opponents."

I once went to him to procure a very small favor for me at the War Department, while I was in the army. He had not yet come from breakfast, and I sat in his office to wait. In a few minutes he came in, in the best of humor, and I made known my errand, which he could perfectly fulfill by a line on a card; but upon hearing me, he said: “I reckon we can do that better if I go straight to the Department with you. I reckon Col. Larned will be there by this time," and we. started together, he being in the best of humor. But I, unfortunately, had seen an applicant for office, waiting in an ante-room, whom I knew, and he implored me to help him; so I immediately commenced to say: "William Houston is here, waiting to see you, and I think," but Lincoln.

stopped me from advocating Houston's claims, by as dark a frown and as severe a burst of anger as I ever knew him to display. I desisted at once, and we did our errand, his good humor being immediately restored. The fact was that William Houston was a brother of the celebrated Sam. Houston, and much resembled him. He had come from Memphis, Tennessee, where he had been a lumber merchant; and was now an applicant for a clerkship. I thought he should have had it, but Lincoln seemed very inimical to the appointment, for some reason which he did not disclose to me; but I never saw Lincoln, or any one else, change from good-humor to rage, and back to good-humor again, so quick as on that occasion.

;

Upon another occasion, I was passing through the Treasury Department and the walk in front of his house, to the War Department, when Mr. Lincoln came out of his front door alone, and started at a brisk pace in the same direction. I ran and caught up with him and took his hand. He neither halted nor looked around, but seeing who it was, he at once said: "A man from your place has just left me, who is a great judge of horses." "Oh! yes," said I, “I know him," naming a man. "No," said he, "his name is do you know him?" I said no, when he went on: "Well, he tried to argue to me that he could be of great service to me, in inspecting horses bought for the army; and I tried to get rid of him, and the more I tried, the more he hung on and would not give up. So I had to say to him at last, so that he would understand: I hain't got anything to give you! I HAIN'T got anything to give you!' and when I said that, he looked at me in such a pitiful way—such a despairing look—that I can't get over it-it hurts me. I expect his family-little children perhaps are depending upon my giving him something to do."

When he was inaugurated, John Hanks, his cousin, who had helped him split the historic rails, came on from Macon

county, resplendent in a new suit of blue jeans, as an applicant for an Indian agency. As Hanks was an extremely moderate farmer, and never had any business training, and no education, Lincoln was nonplussed. He wanted to gratify his relative and friend, but was fearful of his utter lack of business qualifications. "He is thoroughly honest," he said to me, "and his son has a tolerable education, and might be his clerk; how would it do?" The Illinois people in Washington were favorable to the appointment, and Lincoln personally wanted to make it, but his scruples about doing anything that savored of wrong were too great and Hanks was never appointed. And Dennis Hanks, another cousin, made an abortive attempt to secure the Charleston, Illinois, post-office. My judgment is that Lincoln regarded his obligation to duty as a stronger obligation than that to friendship and that in his distribution of patronage, as well as in his other public acts, he must so act, as to gain and hold, for the good of the cause, the most influential, and greatest number of, adherents and that he especially must gain and hold those whose affinities and interests might impel them to the other side. The necessity for this line of policy will explain many of his, otherwise, incomprehensible acts.

Lincoln never forgot, neglected or disdained his poor and obscure kinsfolk; and his fidelity to his step-mother and to his foster-brother, constitute one the most beautiful pages of his biography.

In the summer of 1856, when he was one of the electors at large on the Fremont ticket, a crippled boy was aiding a drover to drive some horses to the northern part of the state. They stopped over night at Champaign; and, while there, this boy went to a small watch-makers' shop, kept by an old and decrepit man named Green, upon an errand, and stole a watch. The theft was discovered in time to cause the boy's arrest at their noon stopping-place. He was brought before