Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cisco’s agreement to stay on should have ended the matter; but Chase, peeved at Lincoln’s refusal to meet in person and bent on reestablishing his authority over his own appointments, could not rest. He decided to chasten the president with what was essentially his fourth letter of resignation, certain it would again be rejected. He began his letter by enclosing Cisco’s telegram withdrawing his resignation, which, he acknowledged, “relieves the present difficulty.” But then he went on: “I cannot help feeling that my position here is not altogether agreeable to you; and it is certainly too full of embarrassment and difficulty and painful responsibility to allow in me the least desire to retain it. I think it my duty therefore to enclose to you my resignation.”
Lincoln was seated at his desk in his office, he later recalled, when a messenger handed him a letter from the Treasury Department. “I opened it, recognized Chase’s handwriting, read the first sentence, and inferred from its tenor that this matter was in the way of satisfactory adjustment. I was truly glad of this, and, laying the envelope with its inclosure down upon the desk, went on talking. People were coming and going all the time till three o’clock, and I forgot all about Chase’s letter. At that hour it occurred to me that I would go down stairs and get a bit of lunch. My wife happened to be away, and they had failed to call me at the usual time [Mary was in Massachusetts for Robert’s graduation from Harvard]. While I was sitting alone at table my thoughts reverted to Chase’s letter, and I determined to answer it just as soon as I should go up stairs again.
“Well, as soon as I was back here, I took pen and paper and prepared to write, but then it occurred to me that I might as well read the letter before I answered it. I took it out of the envelope for that purpose, and, as I did so, another inclosure fell from it upon the floor. I picked it up, read it, and said to myself,
‘Halloo, this is a horse of another color!’
It was his resignation. I put my pen into my mouth, and
grit my teeth
upon it. I did not long reflect.”
Lincoln quickly perceived that Chase was essentially saying: “You have been acting very badly. Unless you say you are sorry, & ask me to stay & agree that I shall be absolute and that you shall have nothing, no matter how you beg for it, I will go.” This presumption the president could not and would not countenance. He took his pen from his mouth and began to write.
“Your resignation of the office of Secretary of the Treasury,” he tersely opened, “is accepted. Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity, I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relation which it seems can not be overcome, or longer sustained, consistently with the public service.”
Early the next morning, Lincoln called John Hay into his office and asked him to deliver the news of Chase’s resignation to the Senate as soon as it convened, along with his recommendation of former Ohio governor David Tod as his successor. “It is a big fish,” he said. “I thought I could not stand it any longer.” Though worried that the president was making a costly mistake, the loyal Hay proceeded to the Capitol, reaching the Senate just as the chaplain recited the opening prayer.
Still ignorant of the president’s letter, Chase went about his daily business, anticipating Lincoln’s penitent request for him to continue his duties. Perhaps Lincoln would personally visit his office, put his arm around him, and again tell him how much he was needed. After breakfast, Chase went to his office, where he received word that Senator Fessenden of Maine wanted to see him immediately at the Capitol. Riding in his carriage, he surmised that the chairman of the Finance Committee wanted to discuss the various financial bills currently before him. In the midst of his conversation with Fessenden, a messenger arrived to tell the senator of David Tod’s nomination. “Have you resigned?” the distraught Fessenden asked. “I am called to the Senate & told that the President has sent in the nomination of your successor.” Stunned, Chase explained that he had indeed sent in his resignation, but did not know that it had been accepted.
Returning at once to the department, Chase found the letter from Lincoln. Reaching the part where Lincoln spoke of “mutual embarrassment” in their relations, Chase was dumbfounded. “I had found a good deal of embarrassment from him,” he recorded in his diary that night, “but what he had found from me I could not imagine, unless it has been created by my unwillingness to have offices distributed by spoils or benefits with more regard to the claims of divisions, factions, cliques and individuals, than to fitness of selection.” Blinded by self-righteousness and donning what Nicolay and Hay termed “his full armor of noble sentiments,” Chase refused to see that in choosing the inexperienced Field, he, not the president, was filling an office on the basis of faction rather than fitness.
The startling news spread quickly on Capitol Hill. “The Senators were struck dumb with amazement,” Noah Brooks reported. The members of the Senate Finance Committee convened an emergency meeting and decided to go as a body to the White House to lodge a vehement protest. “Fessenden was frightened,” Lincoln later told Hay; “Conness [of California] was mad.” Lincoln listened patiently to their concerns about losing Chase at this perilous time and their doubts about Tod as a viable successor. Then, reaching into his desk, he pulled out Chase’s previous letters of resignation and read them aloud to his visitors, along with the gracious replies that had kept Chase in the cabinet each time. Moreover, though he agreed that “Mr. Chase had a full right to indulge in his ambition to be President,” he suggested that the indiscretions of Chase’s friends had so complicated matters that the two of them “disliked to meet each other” in person. In fact, in recent weeks, Chase had declined to attend most of the regular cabinet meetings. The situation had become “unendurable,” Lincoln concluded, this most recent controversy being simply “the last straw.” Though the committee left dissatisfied, they at least departed with a true picture of the long history behind the final break.
Chase’s friend Massachusetts congressman Samuel Hooper came in to see the president later that afternoon. He said he felt “very nervous & cut up” by Chase’s departure. Treasury Registrar Lucius Chittenden was equally distraught, telling Lincoln that the loss of Chase was “worse than another Bull Run defeat,” for there was not a single man in the country who could replace him. “I will tell you,” Lincoln said, “how it is with Chase. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to fall into a bad habit. Chase has fallen into two bad habits…. He thinks he has become indispensable to the country…. He also thinks he ought to be President; he has no doubt whatever about that.” These two unfortunate tendencies, Lincoln explained, had made Chase “irritable, uncomfortable, so that he is never perfectly happy unless he is thoroughly miserable.”
At this point, according to Chittenden, Lincoln paused. “And yet there is not a man in the Union who would make as good a chief justice as Chase,” he continued, “and, if I have the opportunity, I will make him Chief Justice of the United States.” Chittenden concluded that this extraordinary want of vindictiveness toward someone who had caused him such grief proved that Lincoln “must move upon a higher plane and be influenced by loftier motives than any man” he had ever known. Yet while Lincoln did indeed possess unusual magnanimity, he was also a shrewd politician. He mentioned the chief justiceship to Chittenden knowing that when Chase learned of it, the prospect might dampen his public opposition. Lincoln made a similar remark to Congressman Hooper. In a relaxed conversation, he expressed his “esteem” for the secretary and his sincere “regret” that the two of them had become so “awkward” and “constrained” when they got together. When Hooper relayed these comments to his friend, Chase was moved, suggesting that “had any such expressions of good will” been tendered before his resignation, he might have acted differently. Unfortunately, it was too late.
The news of Chase’s resignation was met with dismay and regret in the country. He was “the great magician of the treasury,” the
Chicago Tribune
wrote; “his name will be handed down to history as the greatest financier of his century.” Greeley’s
Tribune
went even further, claiming that “Mr. Chase is one of the very few great men left in public life since the almost simultaneous decease of Messrs. Clay, Webster and Calhoun.”
Choosing a worthy successor was vital, and it was not clear that David Tod was up to the task. Any concerns Lincoln might have had about his hasty choice were alleviated, however, when he received a telegram from the former governor declining the post for reasons of health. According to Francis Carpenter, Lincoln “laid awake some hours, canvassing in his mind the merits of various public men.” By morning, he had found the ideal solution, a candidate so perfect he should have considered him from the start: William Pitt Fessenden.
“First,”
he told Hay the next morning, “he knows the ropes thoroughly: as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance he knows as much of this special subject as Mr. Chase.
2nd
he is a man possessing a national reputation and the confidence of the country. 3
d
He is a radical—without the petulant and vicious fretfulness of many radicals.”
In a far better humor, Lincoln handed Hay his official nomination of Fessenden to carry to the Senate. When Hay told him that Fessenden was in the reception room waiting to see him, Lincoln said: “Send him in & go at once to the Senate.” Understanding that Fessenden might be reluctant, and perhaps remembering that three years earlier he had sent in Chase’s nomination before securing his acceptance, the president hoped that a fait accompli would once again move the process forward.
Lincoln greeted Fessenden warmly and listened politely for a few minutes as the senator suggested a few names for the vacant Treasury post. Smiling, Lincoln finally interrupted and told Fessenden there was no need to continue. He had found his man, and the nomination of Fessenden was already en route to the Senate. “You must withdraw it, I cannot accept,” Fessenden cried out, jumping to his feet. He explained that his health was not good, and he was certain that the pressures of the new job would kill him. “If you decline,” Lincoln said, “you must do it in open day: for I shall not recall the nomination.” Fessenden left with a promise that he would think on it further, though his acceptance was doubtful.
Returning to the Senate, Fessenden discovered that his colleagues had unanimously approved his nomination. Encircled by the warmth of their good wishes and congratulations, he began to waver. “Telegrams came pouring in from all quarters,” he later recalled, insisting that he accept for the good of the nation, that he was an inspired choice for the critical post. It was both the most rewarding and “the most miserable” day of his life, for he still feared that the duties of the post would be his death. “Very well,” the always blunt Stanton told him, “you cannot die better than in trying to save your country.”
As he was driven to the White House the next morning, however, Fessenden carried with him a letter declining the nomination. It took all of the president’s persuasive powers to change his mind. “He said the crisis was such as demanded any sacrifice, even life itself,” Fessenden recalled, “that Providence had never deserted him or the country, and that his choice of me was a special proof that Providence would not desert him. All this and more.” In the end, Fessenden felt he “could not decline but at the risk of danger to the country.”
Fessenden’s appointment received universal praise. “He is a man of undoubted financial ability, and of unsurpassed personal integrity,” the
Chicago Tribune
wrote, reflecting the sentiment of many Northern papers. Radicals felt he was one of their own, while conservatives applauded his intelligence and experience. “He is honest,” Elizabeth Blair told her husband, “& as Mrs Jeff [Davis] once said the ablest of all the Republican Senators.” The business world, long familiar with his work on the Senate Finance Committee, breathed a sigh of relief. “I am the most popular man in my country,” Fessenden wryly noted several days after his acceptance.
“So my official life closes,” Chase recorded in his diary on the last day of June. Sadness pervades the entry, written when the oppressive heat of Washington was such, observed Bates, that “even the trees in the streets are wilting.” Chase believed he had “laid broad foundations” to secure financial support for the troops, but he knew the job was still unfinished. From this point on, he would not have any real influence.
If Chase had hoped his resignation would produce consternation and regret among his cabinet colleagues, he was disappointed. On the night his departure was announced, Blair and Bates called on Welles to talk over the startling event. While they were all surprised, none was sorry to see him go. “I look upon it as a blessing,” Welles said. On numerous occasions Welles had confided doubts about Chase’s character to his diary, observing that he lacked “the courage and candor to admit his errors,” and that “his jokes are always clumsy—he is destitute of wit.” Bates greeted Chase’s retirement with “a vague feeling of relief from a burden, and a hope of better things,” observing that Chase’s relations with his fellow cabinet ministers had long since failed “to be cordial.” And Monty Blair, whose family regarded Chase as a mortal enemy, was thrilled. Old Man Blair happily informed Frank that Chase had “dropped off at last like a rotten pear unexpectedly to himself & every body else.” Seward, unlike his other colleagues, expressed no personal pleasure in Chase’s demise. He simply informed Frances of his relief that the “Cabinet crisis” did not engender a “severe shock” in the country. He traced the origin of the present upheaval back to “the first day of the Administration,” when, against his advice, Lincoln had created his compound cabinet.
As Chase prepared to leave Washington, he noted sadly that Stanton, “warm & cordial as ever,” was the only former colleague who came to see him “—no other Head of Dept. has called on me since my resignation.” If Chase believed the powerful war secretary might feel the slightest compulsion to resign his own place in solidarity with his old friend, however, he was mistaken.