[139]
who was then in command at Richmond: ‘Under the circumstances I advise you to decline the Secretaryship in advance.’
But Schofield started for Washington and went at once to visit Grant, who revised his opinion, and Schofield entered the Cabinet with the full concurrence of the General-in-Chief.
He displayed rare ability in his difficult position.
He was able to perform his duties with efficiency, so as to satisfy the President, and at the same time not offend the Legislature nor the party that had sought to overthrow his chief.
A subordinate of Grant in the army and his personal friend, owing indeed to Grant much of his advancement, he behaved to his great inferior with consummate tact and delicacy, deferring to him whenever this was proper, and nevertheless maintaining the dignity of his own position.
Their relations were always extremely cordial.
With Evarts and Schofield in the Cabinet, Grant was able, even as the candidate of the party that was so hostile to the President, to retain something like concord with the Government.
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
S. S. Scranton and Co., Hartford, 1887.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.