was considerable. Lincoln, believing that his service was
valuable, refused to be influenced by any feeling of personal antagonism
or personal rivalry. He held on to the Secretary until the last year of
the War, when deciding that the Cabinet could then work more smoothly
without him, he accepted his resignation. Even then, however, although
he had had placed in his hands a note indicating a measure of what might
be called personal disloyalty on the part of Chase, Lincoln was
unwilling to lose his service for the country and appointed him as Chief
Justice.

Montgomery Blair was put into the Cabinet as Postmaster-General more
particularly as the representative of the loyalists of the Border
States. His father was a leader in politics in Missouri, in which the
family had long been of importance. His brother, Frank P. Blair, served
with credit in the army, reaching the rank of Major-General. The Blair
family was quite ready to fight for the Union, but was very unwilling to
do any fighting for the black man. They wanted the Union restored as it
had been, Missouri Compromise and all. It was Blair who had occasion
from time to time to point out, and with perfect truth, that if, through
the influence of Chase and of the men back of Chase in Massachusetts and
northern Ohio, immediate action should be taken to abolish slavery in
the Border States, fifty thousand men who had marched out of those
States to the support of the Union might be and probably would be
recalled. "By a stroke of the pen," said Blair, "Missouri, eastern
Tennessee, western Maryland, loyal Kentucky, now loyally supporting the
cause of the nation, will be thrown into the arms of the Confederacy."
During the first two years of the War, and in fact up to September,
1863, the views of Blair and his associates prevailed, and with the
fuller history before us, we may conclude that it was best that they
should have prevailed. This was, at least, the conclusion of Lincoln,
the one man who knew no sectional prejudices, who had before him all the
information and all the arguments, and who had upon him the pressure
from all quarters. It was not easy under the circumstances to keep peace
between Blair and Chase. Probably no man but Lincoln could have met the
requirement.

The Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, while not a
man of brilliancy or of great initiative, appears to have done his part
quietly and effectively in the great work of the building a