“Lincoln’s ministers had no idea that he towered above them,” says Mr. John T. Morse, Jr., “and no one of them was at all overawed by him in those days.  Presiding over them at the Cabinet, casually meeting them, chatting with them or lounging as was his habit in Stanton’s room, Lincoln seemed only officially superior to them.  One of them had expected to be President, and another meant to be; a third dared to be insolent and unruly; it seemed to be only by a chance of politics that these men stood to him as junior partners to a senior, or like a board of directors to the president of a corporation.”

The unfriendly feeling existing between members of the Cabinet comes out in many entries in Welles’s Diary.  “Pressing, assuming, violent, impatient, intriguing, harsh, and arbitrary,” are examples of the terms in which Stanton is spoken of by Welles His contempt for the Committee on the Conduct of the War is expressed in no less stinging words.  The members of this committee “are most of them narrow and prejudiced partisans, mischievous busybodies, and a discredit to Congress.  Mean and contemptible partisanship colors all their acts.”  It is amusing to note that while Secretary Welles was thus outspoken in his criticisms of others, he himself did not escape calumny.  One critic (Thurlow Weed, who, it may be remembered, had objected to Welles’s appointment to a Cabinet position when Lincoln suggested it to him in their consultation at Springfield before the inauguration) declared that “It is worse than a fault, it is a crime, to keep that old imbecile at the head of the Navy Department.”  And another critic expressed the uncomplimentary opinion that “If Lincoln would send old Welles back to Hartford, it would be better for the Navy and for the country.”

The accounts of the earliest Cabinet meetings, as given by Secretary Welles, who was nearly always present, are full of interest.  “Cabinet meetings, which at that exciting period should have been daily, were infrequent, irregular, and without system,” says Mr. Welles.  “The Secretary of State notified his associates when the President desired a meeting of the heads of Departments.  It seemed unadvisable to the Premier—­as he liked to be called and considered—­that the members should meet often, and they did not.  Consequently there was very little concerted action.  At the earlier meetings there was little or no formality; the Cabinet meetings were a sort of privy council or gathering of equals, much like a Senatorial caucus, where there was no recognized leader and the Secretary of State put himself in advance of the President.  No seats were assigned or regularly taken.  The Secretary of State was invariably present some little time before the Cabinet assembled, and from his former position as the chief executive of the largest State in the Union as well as from his recent place as a Senator, and from his admitted experience and familiarity with affairs, assumed, and was allowed, as was proper,