The Running Fever
“There is a malady of vulnerable heels—a species of running fever—which operates on sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the song did on its owner. When he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. A witty Irish soldier always boasting of his bravery when no danger was nigh, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied:
“‘Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with me.’”—(Debate, Lincoln: Springfield, Illinois, December, 1839.)
“ONE AND A HALF TIMES BIGGER THAN OTHER MEN!”
Most conspicuous among the host of seeming friends consistently and constantly plotting against their chief to replace him if not actually displace him, was Salmon P. Chase. His whole career was that of the office-seeker incarnate. School-teacher, lawyer, governor of his State of adoption, Ohio—for he was a New Hampshire man—he tried from 1856 all parties to nominate him for the Presidency, at all openings. His inability to inspire trust forbade his having a personal following of any strength. Lincoln easily saw through him, but he had a fellow-feeling for an indubitably honest treasurer. To think of the countless opportunities he had to enrich himself out of the public coffers! Like another incorruptible statesman, he might have said: “I wonder at my qualms when I had but to stretch out my hand to pocket thousands!” But he truthfully said, when a hack impudently hinted that he could have the nomination dearest to his heart if he would but use to his private ends the vast patronage at his command:
“I should despise myself if capable of appointing or removing a man for the sake of the Presidency.”
In February, 1861, the Peace Congress (Massachusetts) delegation called on the President to recommend Salmon P. Chase for the Treasury Department. Lincoln was already favorable, for he said:
“From what I know and hear, I think Mr. Chase is about a hundred and fifty to any other man’s hundred for that place.”
This is why Lincoln, when compelled to remove the underminer, solaced him with the bed to fall upon of the Supreme Court judgeship. He said of him: “Chase is about one and a half times bigger than any one I ever knew.”