personal service and for friendly loyalty to be
willing, when the claim was finally pressed, to put it to one side as
unwarranted. The appointment of Cameron was made and proved to be
expensive for the efficiency of the War Department and for the repute of
the administration. It became necessary within a comparatively short
period to secure his resignation. It was in evidence that he was
trafficking in appointments and in contracts. He was replaced by Edwin
M. Stanton, who was known later as "the Carnot of the War." Stanton's
career as a lawyer had given him no direct experience of army affairs.
He showed, however, exceptional ability, great will power, and an
enormous capacity for work. He was ambitious, self-willed, and most
arbitrary in deed and in speech. The difficulty with Stanton was that he
was as likely to insult and to browbeat some loyal supporter of the
government as to bring to book, and, when necessary, to crush, greedy
speculators and disloyal tricksters. His judgment in regard to men was
in fact very often at fault. He came into early and unnecessary conflict
with his chief and he found there a will stronger than his own. The
respect of the two men for each other grew into a cordial regard. Each
recognised the loyalty of purpose and the patriotism by which the
actions of both were influenced. Lincoln was able to some extent to
soften and to modify the needless truculency of the great War Secretary,
and notwithstanding a good deal of troublesome friction, armies were
organised and the troops were sent to the front.

The management of the Treasury, a responsibility hardly less in
importance under the war conditions than that of the organisation of the
armies, was placed in the hands of Senator Chase. He received from his
precursor an empty treasury while from the administration came demands
for immediate and rapidly increasing weekly supplies of funds. The task
came upon him first of establishing a national credit and secondly of
utilising this credit for loans such as the civilised world had not
before known. The expenditures extended by leaps and bounds until by the
middle of 1864 they had reached the sum of $2,000,000 a day. Blunders
were made in large matters and in small, but, under the circumstances,
blunders were not to be avoided and the chief purpose was carried out. A
sufficient credit was established, first with the citizens at home and
later with investors abroad, to make a market for the milli