Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Author:Doris Kearns Goodwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, Political, Azizex666, History
ISBN: 9780684824901
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHASE, UNLIKE LINCOLN, was never able to forgo his statesmanlike persona and simply enjoy conversations and lighter amusements. He was inclined to let things fester, brooding over perceived slights and restlessly calculating the effect of every incident on his own standing. Weeks after the cabinet crisis had been resolved, he questioned his own decision to stay on board. “I have neither love nor taste for the position I occupy,” he told Horace Greeley, “and have only two great regrets connected with it—one, that I ever took it; the other, that having resigned it I yielded to the counsels of those who said I must resume it.”

Chase became physically ill during the tumultuous debate on Capitol Hill over his banking bill, terrified that the measures necessary to finance the war would not make it through. When the bills passed and the new greenbacks were ready for distribution, he momentarily basked in the knowledge that the Treasury was full for the first time since the war began. He was also pleased by the fact that his own handsome face would appear in the left-hand corner of every dollar bill. He had deliberately chosen to place his picture on the ubiquitous one-dollar bill rather than a bill of a higher denomination, knowing that his image would thus reach the greatest number of people. His mood quickly darkened when he contemplated his own strained finances, however, and feared that his personal investments with Jay Cooke and his brother, Henry, might be misconstrued. Their virtual monopoly over the government bond business was beginning to attract negative newspaper comment, though they had succeeded brilliantly in selling the war bonds to the public.

The stormy and irascible secretary of war also seemed unable to relax or distract himself from the incessant pressures of his office. Stanton’s clerk, Charles Benjamin, recalled that “a word or a gesture would set [Stanton] aflame in an instant. He would dash the glasses before his eyes far up on his forehead, as though they pained or obstructed his vision; the muscles of his face would become agitated, and his voice would tremble and grow intense, without elevation.” Though “the storm would pass away as quickly as it came,” and though Stanton would quickly make amends to victims of his ill humor, the employees in the War Department, while respecting Stanton greatly, never loved him as Lincoln’s aides loved their president.

Stanton also lacked Lincoln’s ability to put grudges behind him. When asked why he disliked the Sanitary Commission, which had done so much to promote healthy conditions in the army camps, Stanton replied that the commission had persuaded the president and the Senate to appoint a surgeon general against his vigorous objections. “I’m not used to being beaten, and don’t like it,” he said, “and therefore I am hostile to the Commission.” In fact, Stanton admitted, he “detested it.”

Those who worked with Stanton attributed his “nervous irritability” to the combination of overwork and poor health. At times, his asthma became so severe that he collapsed in “violent fits of strangulation.

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