Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House

“ [345] utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office — a way to live without work; from which nature I am not free myself.” It puzzled him a good deal, at Washington, to know and to get at the root of this dread desire,--this contagious disease of national robbery in the nation's death-struggle.

Because Mr. Lincoln could not feel any interest in such little things as I have spoken of, nor feel any particular interest in the success of those who were thus struggling and wriggling, he was called indifferent — nay, ungrateful — to his friends. Especially is this the case with men who have aided Mr. Lincoln all their life. Mr. Lincoln always and everywhere wished his friends well; he loved his friends and clung to them tenaciously, like iron to iron welded; yet he could not be actively and energetically aroused to the true sense of his friends' particularly strong feelings of anxiety for office. From this fact Mr. Lincoln has been called ungrateful. He was not an ungrateful man by any means. He may have been a cool man — a passive man in his general life; yet he was not ungrateful, Ingratitude is too positive a word — it does not convey the truth. Mr. Lincoln may not have measured his friendly duties by the applicant's hot desire; I admit this. He was not a selfish man,--if by selfishness is meant that Mr. Lincoln would do any act, even to promote himself to the Presidency, if by that act any human being was wronged. If it