It was addressed
to a boy who had evidently spoken with natural pride of having met the
President and whose word had been questioned:
"The White House, March 18, 1861.
"I did see and talk in May last at Springfield, Illinois, with
Master George Edward Patten."
With the beginning of the work of the administration, came trouble with
the members of the Cabinet. The several secretaries were, in form at
least, the choice of the President, but as must always be the case in
the shaping of a Cabinet, and as was particularly necessary at a time
when it was of first importance to bring into harmonious relations all
of the political groups of the North which were prepared to be loyal to
the government, the men who took office in the first Cabinet of Lincoln
represented not any personal preference of the President, but political
or national requirements. The Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, had, as we
know, been Lincoln's leading opponent for the Presidential nomination
and had expressed with some freedom of criticism his disappointment that
he, the natural leader of the party, should be put to one side for an
uncultivated, inexperienced Westerner. Mr. Seward possessed both
experience and culture; more than this, he was a scholar, and came of a
long line of gentlefolk.
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