A Connecticut Yankee in Lincoln’s Cabinet: Navy Secretary Gideon Welles Chronicles the Civil War

Chapter 2: Cabinet Problems and Cabinet Crisis

33 Chapter 2 Cabinet Problems and Cabinet Crisis This chapter deals with two interrelated topics. Section I contains a selection of Welles’s numerous complaints that Lincoln failed to make fuller, more-regular use of the cabinet as a consultative and advisory body, a failing he usually blamed on Secretary of State Seward at least much as on the president. The second section reproduces Welles’s detailed account of the cabinet crisis of December 1862, when a caucus of Republican senators, believing Seward was reluctant about emancipation and a drag on the administration and the war effort, tried to force Lincoln to oust him from the cabinet. I In the following excerpt Welles discusses at length what he sees as the fundamental problem with the cabinet’s functioning and how the problem originated during the early weeks of the administration. He emphasizes Seward’s desire to be the administration’s dominant force – a kind of prime minister or premier. Viewed in the light of modern Lincoln scholarship, Welles can be faulted for overstating Seward’s influence on the president and failing to understand Lincoln’s skill at protecting his power and prerogatives.1 (Significantly, in some of his post-war writings, Welles himself took issue with claims that Seward had dominated the 1 Many historians have emphasized Lincoln’s exceptional skill at protecting his presidential prerogatives and maintaining the initiative on virtually every important issue he confronted. A good overview of the topic is William E. Gienapp, “Abraham Lincoln and Presidential Leadership,” in James M. McPherson, ed., “We Cannot Escape History”: Lincoln and the Last Best Hope of Earth (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 63-85. 34 Cabinet Problems and Cabinet Crisis administration.2 ) It is also possible that Welles’s criticisms of Seward, in both this and other chapters, reflect jealousy that Seward had established an unusually close personal relationship with the president – much closer than any other cabinet member. September 16, 1862: At the Executive Mansion, the Secretary of State informed us there was to be no Cabinet meeting. He was authorized by the President to communicate the fact. Smith said it would be as well, perhaps, to postpone the Cabinet meetings indefinitely – there seemed no use latterly for our coming together. Others expressed corresponding opinions. Seward turned off, a little annoyed. An unfavorable impression is getting abroad in regard to the President and the Administration, not without reason, perhaps, and which prompted Smith and others to express their minds freely. There is really very little of a government there at this time, so far as most of the Cabinet is concerned. Seward spends more or less of each day with the President, and absorbs his attention, and influences his action. . . . The President has, I believe, sincere respect and regard for each and every member of the Cabinet, but Seward seeks and has outstanding influence, which is not always wisely used. The President would do better without him, were he to follow his own instincts, and were he to consult all his advisers in council, he would find his own opinions confirmed. No one attempts to obtrude himself, or warn the President, or suggest to him that others than S. be consulted on some of the important measures of which they are not informed until they see them in operation, or hear of them from others. Chase is much chafed by these things, and endeavors, and to some extent succeeds, in also getting beside the President, and obtaining knowledge of what is going forward. But this only excites and stimulates Seward, who has the inside track and means to keep it. The President is unsuspicious – readily gives his confidence, but only one of his Cabinet has manifested a disposition to monopolize it. But important measures are sometimes checked almost as soon as introduced, and, without any consultation, or without being again brought forward, are disposed of, only the Secretary of State having had a view, or ear, or eye of the matter. . . . With greater leisure than most of the Cabinet officers, unless it be Smith of the Interior, he runs to the President two or three times a day, gets his ear, gives him his tongue, makes himself interesting, and artfully contrives to dispose of measures without [cabinet] action or give them direction independent of his associates. . . . 2 These writings are discussed in the Afterword. Cabinet Problems and Cabinet Crisis 35 I...