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because he liked the men as companions or regarded them as personal friends.
At this juncture also, Rawlins was constantly urging that Grant should have no men about him who could possibly become his rivals.
He was always pointing to the trouble that Chase and Seward and other aspirants had made in Lincoln's Cabinet, and declared that a man who would not subordinate his own ambition to that of his chief should not be allowed to enter the Government.
Grant never replied to remarks like these, but he would have been no more than human if he had remembered them.
He certainly now took no man into his Cabinet whose Presidential aspirations seemed likely to come into conflict with his own.
And Grant, from the first, I am sure, desired a re-election.
He did not say so; but no man can hold the Presidential office and not be anxious for this indorsement from the people.
The ambition is both proper and inevitable; and Grant entertained it, like every President who either followed or preceded him. I have, however, no idea that he was planning for re-election thus early; and he certainly never admitted either at the time or afterward that such motives affected him in the selection of Cabinet Ministers.
Nevertheless, I thought then, and I think still, that he was determined to have no rivals near the throne.
On the 5th of March the Cabinet appointments were sent to the Senate.
Washburne was to be Secretary of State; Stewart, Secretary of the Treasury; Borie, Secretary of the Navy; Creswell, Postmaster-General; Hoar, Attorney-General, and Cox, Secretary of the Interior.
Schofield remained Secretary of War.
It was soon discovered that Stewart was ineligible to the post for which he had been named.
The law declared that no person engaged in trade should be appointed Secretary of the Treasury.
Grant had been ignorant of this provision, and the Senate was equally so, for the nomination was confirmed unanimously.
As soon, however, as the disability was ascertained, Grant requested
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