Abraham Lincoln: The Observations of John G. Nicolay and John Hay

3. Distributing Patronage: 1861

33  distributing patronage: 1861 /n April 6, Lincoln made the fateful decision to order the fleet that had been assembled at New York to resupply Fort Sumter. While awaiting word from Charleston, he resumed the onerous chore of distributing patronage to worthy Republicans and removing pro-secession officeholders . By the mid-nineteenth century, a spoils system had become well established, and civil servants were appointed not on the basis of merit but political influence. Congressmen, senators, governors, cabinet members , and local political bosses had a say in the distribution of offices.1 The press complained about Lincoln’s absorption in patronage matters . “Mr. Lincoln suffered his time to be occupied, his mind agitated, and his feelings harrassed [sic] by office-seekers, to an extent never before known, perhaps, in the history of our Government,” editorialized the Cincinnati Gazette.2 Another paper in the Queen City indignantly observed that the president’s “time is precious to the country. The honor and material interests of the nation demand of him the clear-headed consideration of the most delicate and difficult problems ever before a president, but he is remorselessly victimized by the party vampires, and the time and attention that belongs to the country are occupied in squabbles between office hunters who are in person and politics utterly contemptible.”3 In April, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper lamented that a “precious month has been lost in the weighing whether Hiram Barney or Simeon Draper shall have this or that position.”4 John W. 34 distributing patronage Forney of the Philadelphia Press likened the president to a housewife who early one morning was sweeping the kitchen as her children slept upstairs. Suddenly the house caught fire. “The industrious mother, however, determined to finish her sweeping; and so lost her house and her children with it.” Lincoln agreed with that point, telling one office seeker, “I must not be worried by those who desire to furnish one end of our National Government while the Southern portion of it is wrapped in flames.”5 Another Philadelphia journalist, James E. Harvey, complained that while “the Government is crumbling under our feet, the only question considered is whether one man or another shall be a tide waiter, a village Postmaster or an Indian agent.”6 The Indianapolis Journal scolded Lincoln for letting “politicians use up his time with personal solicitations, when he should have kicked the first man who approached him about an appointment not actually needed in the prosecution of the public business out of his sight.”7 The Washington correspondent of the Charleston Mercury sneered that “grave affairs of State are to him of little moment in comparison with the distribution of rewards amongst those who have served him faithfully.”8 Another Democratic paper thought the administration’s motto could be summarized thus: “The spoils first, the country last.”9 Lincoln rose early and spent at least twelve hours a day meeting with callers.10 He was “profoundly disgusted with the importunate herd of office beggars” and complained about being cooped up all day dealing with them. A journalist feared that such “confinement will ruin him if continued.”11 On March 13, he reportedly had to cut short his of- fice hours in order to take a nap.12 Five days later, it was reported that Lincoln’s time “is almost wholly engrossed in hearing applications for office. His order is, that all visitors shall be treated courteously and have a fair opportunity of communicating with him personally.” Such a schedule “exposes him to harassing importunity, and seriously interferes with his own comfort and health. It has now become so vexatious that his best friends think some decided corrective should be applied.”13 35 distributing patronage One corrective was to have each caller screened by the sober, dignified Nicolay, who “was decidedly German in his manner of telling men what he thought of them.”14 The young secretary was unflatteringly described as “the bulldog in the ante-room” with a disposition “sour and crusty”; as “very disagreeable and uncivil”; and as “a grim Cerebrus of Teutonic descent” who “has a very unhappy time of it answering the impatient demands of the gathering, growing crowd of applicants which obstructs passage, hall and ante-room.”15 A more charitable portrait was drawn by the journalist John Russell Young, who said Nicolay “had the...