“Accuse Not a Servant——”
As the possibilities of rapid advancement were redoubled during the war, the President, in his first term of office, was stormed by the office-seekers, who thought it the best plan to have occupiers of posts ousted to give them an opening; so they maligned and even accused chief officials with a freedom unknown in other countries where the bureaucracy is a sacred institution—as within a generation it has become here. Lincoln rebuked one of these covetous vexers by saying gravely to him:
“Friend, go home and attentively read ‘Proverbs,’ chapter thirteen, verse ten.”
The rebuffed applicant found at that page in the book: “Accuse not a servant to his master, lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty!”—(Attested by Schuyler Colfax.)