Lincoln, the unknown

154 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNeven sit at a table and eat with him. They treated him as asocial outcast.Stanton said—and Lincoln heard him say it:"I will not associate with such a damned, gawky, long-armedape as that. If I can't have a man who is a gentleman in appearancewith me in the case, I will abandon it.""I have never before been so brutally treated as by that manStanton," Lincoln said. He returned home, mortified, sunk oncemore in terrible melancholy.When Lincoln became President, Stanton's contempt anddisgust for him deepened and increased. He called him "a painfulimbecile," declared that he was utterly incapable of runningthe Government, and that he ought to be ousted by a militarydictator. Stanton repeatedly remarked that Du Chailluwas a fool to run off to Africa, looking for a gorilla, when theoriginal gorilla was, at that moment, sitting in the White Housescratching himself.In his letters to Buchanan, Stanton abused the President inlanguage so violent that itcan't be put into print.After Lincoln had been in office ten months, a national scandalreverberated throughout the land. The Government wasbeing robbed! Millions lost! Profiteers! Dishonest war contracts!And so on.In addition to that, Lincoln and Simon Cameron, Secretaryof War, differed sharply on the question of arming slaves.Lincoln asked Cameron to resign. He must have a new manto run the War Department. Lincoln knew that the future of thenation might depend upon his choice. He also knew preciselythe man he needed. So Lincoln said to a friend:"I have made up my mind to sit down on all my pride—itmay be a portion of my self-respect—and appoint Stanton Secretaryof War."That proved to be one of the wisest appointments Lincoln"ever made.Stanton stood at his desk in the war-office, a regular tornadoin trousers, surrounded by clerks trembling like Eastern slavesbefore their pasha. Working day and night, refusing to go home,eating and sleeping in the war-office, he was filled with wrathand indignation by the loafing, swaggering, incompetent officersthat infested the army.And he fired them right and left and backward and forward.