previous next
[166] and it required some urging before he consented to enter the Cabinet. Thus the two most important places in the new Government were filled by men who had not been originally selected by Grant.

Meanwhile Borie had read the notification of his appointment as Secretary of the Navy, and proceeded to Washington to thank the President and decline the honor. I was intimate with him, and knowing his reluctance to accept the post, I met him at the station to do what I could to change his feeling. I represented the unfortunate condition of affairs, the frequent changes and disappointments, the blunder about Stewart, the uncertainty about Fish, and Cox, and Hoar, who had all been taken by surprise, and the discredit it would bring on the new Administration if still another Cabinet Minister delayed or declined. Borie was personally very much attached to Grant, and I urged that his acquiescence under the circumstances would be an act of positive friendship. He finally consented to remain in the Cabinet for a few months, until the President could find a successor without increasing the public dissatisfaction at these frequent changes. Of course it was his regard for Grant that decided Borie, but he often laughingly said to me that but for my urging he would not have entered the Cabinet.

Cox and Hoar also finally accepted the honor tendered, but not until the former General-in-Chief discovered that he could not order eminent civilians into office as he had been used to sending soldiers to a new command. He was somewhat surprised that any one should hesitate to accept the position he offered, but as a matter of fact nearly every member of his Cabinet but Rawlins had to be urged to accept his place. Even if their ambition was gratified, the suddenness of the summons found them unprepared; they had their private affairs to arrange, and every man assuming a high political place desires some time to fit himself properly for his new career.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
U. S. Grant (3)
Adolph E. Borie (3)
Hoar (2)
Jacob D. Cox (2)
Alexander T. Stewart (1)
Rawlins (1)
Young Minister (1)
Hamilton Fish (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: