March 4, 1861; The New York Herald
The Administration of the Northern and Southern Confederacies – sketches of the Members, &c., &c., &c.
The inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, the President elect, takes place at Washington toady; and as the new administration comes into office under circumstances unparalleled in the history of the republic, with a separate and distinct Southern government in full operation, we give below brief sketches of the personnel of the two governments, which our readers will find very serviceable.
THE NORTHERN CONFEDERACY.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT.
Abraham Lincoln, President of the Northern Confederacy, was born in Kentucky, Feb. 12, 1809. His ancestors, belonging to the society of Friends, originally settled in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, whence they removed to Virginia, and subsequently settled in Kentucky, where the subject of this memoir was first introduced on the stage of life. Mr. Lincoln, imbued with the wandering proclivities of his ancestry, soon removed to Spencer county, Indiana, where he remained for fourteen years. He here received a limited education. In 1830 our subject removed to Illinois. shortly afterwards he served as captain in a regiment of volunteers in the war against Black Hawk. After sustaining a defeat, in 1832, for the Legislature, he was elected to that body for the three succeeding terms by the Whig party. During his term he studied law, and subsequently engaged in practice at Springfield, although still devoting great attention to politics, serving as Whig elector in several Presidential elections. He was elected to Congress in 1846, and served three years, distinguishing himself by his pertinacity in sustaining the Wilmot Proviso, in connection with Seward, Chase & Co. and his opposition to the Mexican war. In 1848 he supported the nomination of Gen. Taylor, and in 1852 was very active for the success of Gen. Scott. In 1849 he was defeated by Gen. Shields for the United States Senatorship, and again in 1855 by Judge Trumbull. In 1856 Mr. Lincoln’s name headed the Fremont electoral ticket. He was first, however, brought in public notice by his memorable campaign against Douglas for the Senatorship.
HANNIBAL HAMLIN, VICE PRESIDENT.
Hannibal Hamlin, the Vice President, was born in Paris, Oxford county, Maine, on the 27th of August, 1809, is a lawyer by profession; was a member of the Maine Legislature from 1836 to 1840; was elected a representative to the Twenty eighth congress, and was re-elected to the Twenty ninth Congress; was a member of the House of Representatives of the State Legislature in 1847, and elected to the United States Senate may 26, 1848, for four years, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Fairfield. He was re-elected for six years, July 25, 1851, and elected Governor of Maine, January 7, 1857, resigning his seat in the Senate and being inaugurated as Governor on the same day. On the 16th of the same month he was re- elected as United States Senator for six years, and resigned the office of Governor February 20, 1857. Mr. Hamlin was formerly a democrat, but prior to his election as Governor of Maine he changed his politics and attached himself to the republican party.
WM. H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF STATE.
Mr. Seward was born in Orange county, in the State of New York, on the 16th of May, 1801. He was educated at Union College, in this State, and took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1820, and of Master of Arts in 1824. At the age of twenty one he established himself at Auburn in the profession of the law, and soon acquired a lucrative and extending practice. Early in his public and professional life he traveled in the Southern slave States and is supposed to have formed at that time the opinions and principles hostile to slavery to which he has since given expression. To a greater degree than is known of any other American statesman – Mr. Sumner, perhaps, excepted – the object of his life seems to have been to counteract the extension of slavery. Upon other questions Mr. Seward’s policy may be described as humanitarian. He is in favor of the education of the people, of the amelioration of the laws and of the development of the material resources of the United States. In these respects he has ever been among the foremost of American statesmen, and may justly claim the prize bestowed upon him by his friends, and scarcely denied by his opponents, of being best and clearest head in America. In 1830 he had acquired such influence and character, that he was elected a member of the Senate of the State of New York, then the highest judicial tribunal of the State, as well as a legislative body. In 1834, at the close of his term of four years, he was nominated a candidate for the Governorship of the State of New York, in opposition to Mr. William L. Marcy, the then Governor, and, later, the distinguished Secretary of State of the Unites States. On this occasion Mr. Seward was defeated by a majority of nearly 10,000. In 1839, his party becoming bolder and stronger, he was triumphantly elected in opposition to Mr. Marcy, the majority being greater than his previous minority. Without having passed through the lower stratum of the House of Representatives, he was in 1849 elected to the Senate of the Untied States for six years. He gave so much satisfaction that he was re-elected in 1855.
S. P. CHASE, SECRETARY OF TREASURY.
Salmon Portland Chase was born at Cornish, N. H., on the opposite bank of the Connecticut river from Windsor, Vt. in the year 1808. When nine years of age his father died, and three years after this bereavement, in 1820, young Chase was found at the seminary in Worthington, Ohio, then conducted by the venerable Bishop Philander Chase, his uncle. Here he remained until Bishop Chase accepted the Presidency of Cincinnati College, entering which, our student soon became a chief among his peers. After a year’s residence at Cincinnati, he returned to his maternal home in New Hampshire and shortly after resumed his studies in Dartmouth college, Hanover, were he graduated in 1826. He shortly after commenced the study of law in the city of Washington under the guidance of the celebrated William Wirt, then Attorney General of the United States. He sustained himself during the years of his professional studied by imparting instruction to a select schools for boys, composed, in part of the sons of the most distinguished men of the nation. He was admitted to the bar at Washington in 1829, and in the following year returned to Cincinnati and entered upon the practice of his profession, in which he soon rose to eminence, and in which he was distinguished for industry and patient investigation. He was subsequently elected a member of the United States Senate, and upon the expiration of his Senatorial term he was put in nomination for Governor of Ohio, and elected. He was again put in nomination for Governor, and was again elected to that position.
SIMON CAMERON, SECRETARY OF WAR.
Gen. Simon Cameron was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. Reverses and misfortunes in his father’s family cast him very early in life on the world to shape and carve out his own fortune. After having removed to Sunbury, in Northumberland county, his father died, while Simon was yet a boy. In 1817 he came to Harrisburg and bound himself as an apprentice to the printing business to James peacock, who is still a resident of Harrisburg, and one of its most worthy and respected citizens. During this time he won the regard and esteem of Mr. Peacock and all his fellow workmen by his correct deportment, his industry, intelligence and faithfulness. His days were devoted to labor and his nights to study. Having completed his apprenticeship he went to Washington city, and was employed as a journeyman printer. In 1824, though scarcely of competent age, he had attained such a position and influence that his party – then in the ascendancy in the Congressional district – proposed to nominate him for congress, an honor which he promptly declined, as interfering with the enterprise in which he was then engaged. He was appointed Adjutant General of the State in 1828, an office which he filled creditably and acceptably during Gov. Shultz’s term; and in 1831, unsolicited, he was appointed by Gen. Jackson as a visitor to West Point, a compliment, at that time, tendered only to the most prominent citizens. To no single man within her borders is Pennsylvania more indebted for her great systems of public improvement and public instruction. Nor did he hesitate to invest his own means, when prosperity and fortune dawned upon him, in enterprise of great public importance. In 1834, he originated and carried to successful completion the Harrisburg, Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad, surmounting difficulties and prejudices which would have appalled and paralyzed a man of ordinary energy and determination. In 1838 he was nominated for congress but declined. He was engaged in public enterprises from which he would not permit himself to be drawn aside by any consideration of office or personal elevation. In 1851 he was mainly instrumental in the formation of the Susquehanna Railroad Company, now consolidated with the Northern Central Railway, by which the upper valleys of the Susquehanna are connected with the capital of the State. There was still another link wanting to form a direct and continuous railroad to New York city, the great commercial metropolis of the Union. General Cameron’s practical mind soon suggested the mode and manner of supplying this want; and the Lebanon Valley Railroad Company was organized, and that was built, and now consolidated with the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. In 1832 General Cameron was elected Cashier of the Middletown Bank – a position which he held for twenty-seven consecutive years. So that about the year 1854, he was at the same time President of the Susquehanna Railroad Company, President of the Lebanon Valley Railroad Company, President of the Commonwealth Insurance Company, and Cashier of the Middletown Bank, besides being director and manager of several other institutions, and having a large private business of his own to manage and superintend. Yet notwithstanding the vast labor and responsibility of these positions, her performed the duties of them all satisfactorily and successfully.
MONTGOMERY BLAIR, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.
The State of Maryland will be represented in the Lincoln Cabinet by Judge Montgomery Blair, who resides at Montgomery Castle, near Silver Spring, Montgomery county, Md. Judge Blare is a son of Francis P. Blare, well known in Gen. Jackson time. He graduated at West Point, went to the State of Missouri, practised law in St. Louis, was made Judge, and was appointed by President Pierce one of the Judges of the Court of Claims, from which place he was removed by President Buchanan. Judge Blare is now in the prime of life and mental vigor, and there is no man south of Pennsylvania who is more devoted to republicanism, or who is more popular among the radical republicans all over the North and West. He is son-in-law of the late Hon. Levi Westbury, of Mew Hampshire, and brother of Frank P. Blare, Jr., Congressman elect from the St. Louis district.
C.B. SMITH, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.
Mr. Smith is well known in Indiana, and is reposed to be possessed of a vigorous intellect and considerable administrative tact and ability. He has been in Congress, and was Commissioner on Mexican claims. In regard to his political faith, it is not certain that he has made any decisive declaration, but it is very generally presumed that he is a moderate republican.
GIDEON WELLES, POSTMASTER GENERAL.
Mr. Widen Wells, of Connecticut, is the Northern Postmaster General. Mr. Wells has been for upwards of thirty years a leading politician in Connecticut, and for much of that time has been connected, directly and indirectly, with the public press, wielding a partisan pen, and always exhibiting evidences of unquestionable sensibility to his opponents in the advocacy of his opinions, political or otherwise. he has for some time held the office of Postmaster of Hartford, under Mr. Van Husen’s administration, and left the office soon after the election of General Harrison in 1840. During a part of Mr. Polk’s administration he occupied an important position in the Navy Department. Like many other prominent Northern democrats, Mr. Wells disagreed with his party on the subject of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which breach was still further increased by the Kansas policy of the Pierce and Buchanan administrations. The territorial question being the chief one at large, he became identified with the republican party soon after its organization, and has since been one of its leaders, taking a prominent part in its conventions, State and national. He was a delegate from the State at large to the Chicago Convention, and constituted one of the committee to proceed to Springfield with official notice of Mr. Lincoln’s nomination. He was also one of the Presidential electors. Nor was his visit to Springfield the first time he had met that distinguished gentleman. While in Hartford a year or more since, they formed a somewhat intimate acquaintance, which resulted in the warmest mutual friendship and confidence; so that Mr. Lincoln has, in the selection, no doubt acted as much upon his own personal knowledge and estimation of the man as upon any solicitation of prominent New England republicans.
EDWARD BATES, ATTORNEY GENERAL.
Edward Bates was born on the 4th of September, 1783, on the banks of the James river, in the county of Goochland, Virginia, about thirty miles above Richmond. He was the seventh son and youngest child of a family of twelve children, all of whom lived to a mature age, of Thomas Bates and Caroline M. Woodson. Both of his parents were descendants of the plain old Quaker families which had lived for some generations in the lower counties of the peninsula between James and York rivers. They were married in the Quaker meeting, according to the forms of that simple and virtuous people, in the year 1771; but in 1781 the father lost his membership in the Society of Friends by bearing arms at the siege of Yorktown – a volunteer private soldier under Lafayette. In 1805, Thomas F., the father, died, leaving a very small estate and a large family. Left at an early age an orphan, and poor, the son was fortunate in what is better than patrimony, a heart and a will to labor diligently for promotion. Besides several of his brothers were industrious and prosperous men, and treated the helpless with generous affection. One of them, Fleming Bates, of Northumberland, Virginia, took him into his family as a son, and did a father’s part to him. He had not the benefit of a collegiate education, being prevented by an accident – the breaking of a leg – which stopped him in the middle of his course of study, and confined him at home for nearly two years. In childhood he was taught by his father, and afterwards had the benefit of two years’ instruction of his kinsman, Benjamin Bates, of Hanover, Va., a most excellent man, who, dying, left behind him none more virtuous and few more intelligent. In 1812, having renounced service in the navy, and with no plan of life settled, his brother Frederick (who was Secretary of the Territory of Missouri from 1807 to 1820, when the State was formed, by successive appointments under Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, and was second Governor of the State) invited him to come out to St. Louis and follow the law, offering to see him safely through his course of study. He accepted the invitation, and was to have started in the spring of 1813, but an unlooked for event detained him for a year. Being in his native county of Goochland, a sudden call was made for volunteers to march for Norfolk, to repel an apprehended attack by the British fleet, and he joined a company in February, marched to Norfolk, and served till of October that year, as private, corporal and sergeant, successively. The next spring he set out for St. Louis, and crossed the Mississippi river for the first time on the 29th of April, 1814. Here he studies very diligently in the office of Rufus Easton, a Connecticut man, a good lawyer, regularly educated at Litchfield, and some time a delegate in Congress from Missouri Territory. He came to the bar in the winter of 1816-17, and practised with fair success as a beginner. In 1853 he was elected Judge of the Land Court of St. Louis county, and after serving in the office about three years he resigned and returned again to the practice of law. He acted as President of the River and Harbor Improvement Convention which met at Chicago, and in 1852 acted as President of the Whig National Convention which met at Baltimore. In 1850 he was appointed by President Filmore and confirmed by the Senate Secretary of War, but declined the appointment for personal and domestic reasons. Mr. Bates was complimented with the honorary degree of LLD., in 1858, by Harvard College. Some years before he had been honored with the same degree by Shurtleff College, Illinois.