so to treat it
apparent, since the evidence entirely absolves Lincoln from any
complicity at the time of making the alleged "trade," while he could
hardly be blamed if he felt somewhat hampered by it afterward.

Seward also gave trouble which he ought not to have given. On December 8
Lincoln wrote to him that he would nominate him as secretary of state.
Mr. Seward assented and the matter remained thus comfortably settled
until so late as March 2, 1861, when Seward wrote a brief note asking
"leave to withdraw his consent." Apparently the Democratic complexion of
the cabinet, and the suggestions of suspicious friends, made him fear
that his influence in the ministry would be inferior to that of Chase.
Coming at this eleventh hour, which already had its weighty burden of
many anxieties, this brief destructive note was both embarrassing and
exasperating. It meant the entire reconstruction of the cabinet. Never
did Lincoln's tranquil indifference to personal provocation stand him in
better stead than in this crisis,--for a crisis it was when Seward, in
discontent and distrust, desired to draw aloof from the administration.
He held the note of the recalcitrant politician for two days unanswered,
then he wrote a few lines: "Your note," he said, "is the subject of the
most painful solicitude with me; and I feel constrained to beg that you
will countermand the withdrawal. The public interest, I think, demands
that you should; and my personal feelings are deeply enlisted in the
same direction." These words set Mr. Seward right again; on March 5 he
withdrew his letter of March 2, and in a few hours was appointed.

Immediately after the installation of the new government three
commissioners from the Confederacy came to Washington, and requested an
official audience. They said that seven States of the American Union had
withdrawn therefrom, had reassumed sovereign power, and were now an
independent nation in fact and in right; that, in order to adjust upon
terms of amity and good-will all questions growing out of this political
separation, they were instructed to make overtures for opening
negotiations, with the assurance that the Confederate government
earnestly desired a peaceful solution and would make no demand not
founded in strictest justice, neither do any act to injure their late
confederates. From the Confederate point of view these approaches were
dignified and conciliatory; from the Northern point of view they were
treas