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Hiram Barney (1811-1895)

Hiram Barney
Hiram Barney
Collector of Customs Hiram Barney was a political ally of Salmon P. Chase — which made him an enemy of New York political boss Thurlow Weed, who editorialized in 1864: “The organization of the New York Custom House is a living, burning disgrace.”1 After President Lincoln and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase appointed Barney as Collector of the Port of New York, wrote biographer Alonzo Rothschild, he became “a veritable germ of irritation. He was one of Chase’s most valued supporters. As a political lieutenant, Barney had, in years gone by, won the Radical leader’s good will; as a friend, he had by his private kindnesses laid that gentleman, more recently under heavy and somewhat peculiar obligations.”2 His friendship with Chase was both an advantage for Barney — and the cause of political controversy during the Civil War.
President Lincoln, who had been entertained by Barney while visiting New York for his Cooper Union speech in February 1860, didn’t need much prompting to appoint Barney a year later. After the Cooper Union speech, it was Barney and Charles C. Nott who took Mr. Lincoln out to dinner at the Athenaeum Club on Fifth Avenue. Ohio’s Salmon P. Chase viewed Barney as one of his chief New York sponsors [in 1860], but Chase had little concept of political organization. He was reduced to writing Barney “Find out who concurs with us and get them to act in concert.”3
Barney had supported Mr. Lincoln at the May 1860 Republican National Convention when he realized that Chase was out of the running for the presidential nomination. Barney subsequently raised $35,000 for the national ticket. When Thurlow Weed visited President-elect Lincoln in Springfield in December 1860, he was told: “I have not promised an office to any man, nor have I, but in a single instance, mentally committed myself to an appointment; and as that relates to an important office in your State, I have concluded to mention it to you, under strict injunctions of secrecy, however. If I am not induced by public consideration to change my purpose, Hiram Barney will be Collector of the Port of New York.”4 Barney himself was part of a New York delegation that visited Mr. Lincoln in Springfield in January 1861 to urge Chase’s appointment to the Cabinet.
“Personally Barney was a handsome man with iron-gray hair swept back from a broad forehead and a square, pugnacious jaw. His appearance radiated strength and a sense of purpose. Lincoln had known Barney…for a number of years and had, like Chase, been impressed with what he took to be his sincerity, honesty, and grasp of political realities,” wrote historian John Niven.5
Thurlow Weed, a close ally of William H. Seward, wrote in his memoirs: “I supposed that Mr. Lincoln, in thus frankly avowing his friendship for Mr. Barney, intended to draw me out. I remarked that until I met him at the Chicago convention my acquaintance with Mr. Barney was a very slight; but that after the convention adjourned Mr. Barney joined us (my daughter and a lady friend) in an excursion down the Mississippi and through Iowa, and that my impressions of him personally and politically were favorable, and that I believed he would make an acceptable collector. I added that if it were true, as I had heard, that the reply of an extensive and well-known mercantile firm in New York during an exciting crisis, to Southern merchants, who threatened to withdraw their patronage on account of its opposition to slavery, namely, ‘We offer our goods, not our principles, for sale,’ originated with Mr. Barney, it entitled him to any office he asked for. ‘He has not,’ said Mr. Lincoln, ‘asked for this or any other office, nor does he know of my intention.'”6
Confirmation of Weed’s basic story came from Treasury official Maunsell B. Field. He later claimed that President Lincoln told him: “You remember that when Hiram Barney was appointed, at the beginning of this administration, collector of the port of New York, everybody supposed that he was Chase’s selection and nobody else’s. Now Barney was as much my choice as he was Chase’s; and when (Chase, Seward, and myself standing round that table) Barney’s appointment was decided upon, I believe that I was the most gratified person then present.”7
Chase also favored Barney’s appointment, according to Chase biographer John Niven. Barney was “a long-time friend from Columbus who had served him well as Ohio’s school commissioner during his first gubernatorial term. Barney had moved to New York City four years earlier and had established himself as a successful lawyer in partnership with Benjamin F. Butler’s son William Allen Butler. Barney had worked hard to secure Chase’s nomination for the presidency in 1856 and again in 1860.”8 But Barney had opponents even within the anti-Weed faction of the Republican Party. “Don’t appoint Barney Collector, wrote Tribune Managing Editor Charles A. Dana. “He is an excellent person but has no popular strength and no strength among the merchants. Nor does his political service give him title to such an important position.”9
The appointment which Barney received was not inconsequential. “The greatest prize within [Treasury Secretary Salmon P.] Chase’s department was the collectorship of the port of New York, a place highly paid, honorable, and, through its large number of employees, a means of affecting the politics of New York City and State,” wrote Chase biographer Albert Bushnell Hart. Barney “had been one of the small circle of Chase men in New York in 1860; when the New York delegation came to the President with a slate of appointments, Lincoln informed them that he had himself chosen to nominate Barney. “This appointment was out of the regular course, for Barney was not in the favor of the Seward-Weed combination, and, on the other hand, he was not sufficiently active as a politician to please Mr. Chase’s eager friends; hence in the end it proved satisfactory to neither faction, and gave occasion for many bitter attacks upon the secretary.”10
The impact of Barney’s appointment was felt immediately. “The New York custom-house had long played an important part in national and state politics. The patronage under Barney’s control was very large,” wrote historian Sidney David Brummer. “He was for days deluged with applications for places, the custom-house was thronged with eager seekers for positions, and many persons visited the rotunda merely to witness this spectacle. Subordinate places to the collectorship were given to two other prominent New York radicals, Rufus Andrews (appointed surveyor of the port) and Henry B. Stanton.”11 (Stanton was a prominent abolitionist and husband of feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Andrews was an attorney who had developed a relationship with Mr. Lincoln before his election as President and whose appointment was supported by the Tribune‘s Horace Greeley.) Although Barney was seen as Chase’s appointment, he maintained good relations with other Cabinet members and helped to smooth over difficulties between Chase and William H. Seward concerning the reappointment of Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John A. Cisco.
Barney frequented visited Washington and conferred with Secretary Chase and President Lincoln. After the Union debacle at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862, Chase wrote in his diary: “Barney, collector of New York, came in, and said that Stanton and Wadsworth had advised him to leave for New York this evening, as communication with Baltimore might be cut off before to-morrow.”12 A year later, Chase worried that Barney’s own support for his presidential aspirations might be wavering. Chase recorded in his diary in October 1863: “Barney called at breakfast — seems not exactly to know his own mind — but will go for Mr. Lincoln if he desires reelection.”13
Meanwhile, Barney set the stage for his own political demise. Historian David Donald wrote: “The collector of customs at New York had the privilege of selling a labor contract to haul goods from the docks to storehouses, to unpack boxes, to sample incoming merchandise, etc. On May 11, 1861, the unexpired portion of the labor contract was assigned by Collector Hiram Barney to his own firm, Barney, Parsons, and Butler. Barney admitted that if the government did the work itself, it could annually save $37,000.”14
The contract was merely one of many transactions which undermined Barney’s credibility. One historian wrote that the New York Customs “post, beset with difficulties under the best of conditions, was soon rendered particularly trying by conflicts between the opposing Republican factions. Conservative Republicans accused Barney of allowing his operation to be infiltrated by corrupt and Democratic officials.”15 Thurlow Weed “thought Barney, a friend of Chase, a weak manager, plagued by four deputies who continually intrigued against Lincoln,” according to historian Ernest A. McKay. “Weed said the deputies fired subordinates simply because they took an active part in primaries for the president’s reelection.”16 The irony was that Weed himself was plagued with a reputation for corrupt activities. Chase biographer Frederick J. Blue wrote that the Seward-Weed group “constantly complained that Barney’s lack of forceful leadership and his ineffective use of patronage were hurting the party and strengthening the Democrats.”17
Biographer Albert Bushnell Hart wrote that Chase “resisted the piteous appeals of his friends to reorganize the Custom House in New York and other important offices. Collector Barney had many enemies, who worked upon the President to remove him; yet, in a place where the temptation was strong and the power unquestioned, Chase forbore to use his patronage for his own advantage, and thereby he incurred the reproaches and even the scorn of some would-be supporters.”18 The conflicts grew so great that Barney himself asked to be replaced. A contributing factor was the arrest and imprisonment in Fort Lafayette of a top Barney aide, clerk Albert.M. Palmer, on charges of aiding and abetting dealings in contraband.
Meanwhile, Barney’s enemies spread stories that he was supporting Chase for President and opposing President Lincoln’s reelection. During early 1864, “Lincoln had had his eye on the New York custom house where embarrassing scandals had been uncovered and where Chase had finally brought collector Barney back to his camp,” wrote Chase biographer John Niven. “Probably adding to Lincoln’s irritation and rare displays of anger in his talk with [Attorney General Edward] Bates [on February 13] was that he had finally decided Barney must go. That he had drifted into the radical orbit bolstered Lincoln’s decision.”19 Bates wrote in his diary that President Lincoln “is fully apprehensive of the schemes of the Radical leaders. When I suggested some of their plots, he said they were almost fiendish.”20
But Barney was not replaced until nearly a year after the corruption first became obvious in the fall of 1863 — and until after Chase himself resigned in June 1864. Chase justified his protection of Barney, according to Chase family chroniclers Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden, with the following reasoning: “When he kept Hiram Barney in the New York Customhouse despite clear evidence of corruption, he did not do so because Barney was his political agent or because he owed him money, but because he was willing to sacrifice himself to protect the reputation of his friends.”21 The Beldens wrote that Barney “lent Chase as much as five thousand dollars, managed his New York real estate, and was a close associate of William Sprague [son-in-law of Chase]. Surely he was too good a friend to be sacrificed; and when Lincoln persisted in demanding that he go, Chase got his way by threatening to resign.”22
The loyalty to Barney and to Barney’s assistant came at considerable cost to Chase and Mr. Lincoln — in Congress and in the press. “As the time, however, for the next presidential canvass drew near, the attacks upon him grew fiercer than ever. They presently developed into charges of corruption and incompetency, which a Congressional Committee undertook to investigate.”23 Barney was further bedeviled by an investigation by the House Committee on Public Expenditures into the contraband activities of Henry B. Stanton and his son.
In October 1863, presidential assistant John Hay recorded rumors of the Stanton problem: One Treasury official told Hay that “there is a persistent fight between [George] Opdyke and Barney, Chase being with Opdyke as he thinks O. is for him. Says [Rufus] Andrews & Barney are both very inefficient though good men.”24 Hay learned that Chase’s aide was “investigating a great and disgraceful fraud perpetrated by Henry B. Stanton. He has been clearing goods for the Southern ports and cancelling their bonds-against-running-blockade, for fees paid in hand. It is a most painful affair, as he has been one of the loudest and most uncompromising Anti Slavery men. His wife has also been very prominent in the Women’s Loyal League. Stanton is the chief fugleman of Mr Chase in the Custom House.”25 According to Chase biographer John Niven, it was Stanton’s son Neil who brought the most trouble on the family.26
Barney was further bedeviled by an investigation by the House Committee on Public Expenditures into the contraband activities of the Stantons. “Testimony told of deception, bribery, and inefficient methods, but the committee did not make any judgment about the alleged illegalities,” wrote historian Ernest A. McKay. “Nevertheless, the House reported that there had been ‘oversights, deficiencies, discrepancies [and] imperfections,’ as well as a possible conflict of interest by the deputy collector of the port.”27
The growing pressure was indicated in a letter that President Lincoln wrote Chase on January 11, 1864: “I am receiving letters and dispatches indicating an expectation that Mr. Barney is to leave the Custom House, at New York. Have you anything on the subject.”28 Chase replied: “Nothing at all, except urgent representatives of the necessity of reform, which do not, at all impeach Mr. Barney, in whose integrity I have undiminished confidence.”29
Barney’s position was undermined by the actions of a Chase lieutenant, Joshua Bailey, who was supposed to investigate corruption in Barney’s Customs operations but told the congressional committee investigating him that “whatever might be developed the President would take no action.”30 Furious, Mr. Lincoln wrote Secretary Chase about Bailey: “I have felt considerable anxiety concerning the Custom House at New-York. Mr. Barney has suffered no abatement of my confidence in his honor and integrity; and yet I am convinced that he has ceased to be master of his position. A man by the name of Bailey, whom I am unconscious of ever having seen, or even having heard of, except in this connection, expects to be, and even now assumes to be, Collector de facto, while Mr. Barney remains nominally so. This Mr. Bailey as I understand having been summoned as a witness to testify before a committee of the House of Representatives which purposed investigating the affairs of the New-York Custom-House, took occasion to call on the Chairman in advance, and to endeavor to smother the investigation, saying among other things, that whatever might be developed, the President would take no action, and the committee would thereby be placed unpleasantly. The public interest can not fail to suffer in the hands of this irresponsible and unscrupulous man. I propose sending Mr. Barney Minister to Portugal, as evidence of my continued confidence in him; and I further propose appointing ____ Collector of the Customs at New-York. I wrote the draft of this letter two weeks ago, but delayed sending it for a reason which I will state when I see you.””31 The President was right. It turned out that Bailey was more corrupt than the people he was investigating; he eventually fled to avoid prosecution for embezzlement.
Chase made Barney’s retention a question of personal honor. In early January Chase defended Barney, writing President Lincoln: “I am to-day fifty-six years old. I have never consciously and deliberately injured one fellow man. It is too late for me to begin by sacrificing to clamor the reputation of a man whom I have known for more than twenty years, and whose repute for honesty has been all that time unsullied. I shall not recommend the removal of Mr. Barney, except upon such show of misconduct, or incapacity, as makes it my duty to do so. In such a case I shall not shrink from my duty. I pretend no indifference to the consequences, personal to myself, which you refer to as likely to follow this avowal on my part, But the approval of my own conscience is dearer to me than political position, and I shall cheerfully sacrifice the latter to preserve the former.”32 Chase neglected to mention that Barney was several people to whom he financially obligated. Later that month, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles wrote in his diary: “Hiram Barney, Collector at New York, called on me. Is feeling depressed. The late frauds, or lately discovered frauds, annoy him….”33 Meanwhile, according to Niven: “Thurlow Weed, acting on his own but believing that Lincoln would be renominated and reelected, was slowly gaining control of custom house patronage through Barney’s personal secretary, Albert Palmer. Chase’s friends in New York, Mayor Opdyke and David Dudley Field, had broken with Barney, a fact that further shook Chase’s faith in the collector.”34
President Lincoln later told Treasury Department official Maunsell Field: “I have just as great confidence in Mr. Barney’s integrity and patriotism now as I had then. But after a time things got very mixed in the New York Custom-House, and the establishment was being run almost exclusively in the interest of the radicals. I felt very great delicacy in doing any thing that might be offensive to my friend Barney. And yet something had to be done. There was no use in attempting to bring Chase over to my views. But I tried it, and failed. Then I waited for a time. At last I made up my mind to take action, hoping to be able to afterward reconcile Chase to it. So I sent for Seward, and told him that he must find a diplomatic position in Europe for Barney. Seward said that it was not an easy thing to do; but I was peremptory, and told him it must be done. After two or three days Seward came back, and reported to me that he had found the place. Just then Chase became aware of my little conspiracy. He was very angry; and he told me that the day that Mr. Barney left the New York Custom-House with or without his own consent, he, Chase, would withdraw from the Secretaryship of the Treasury. Well, I backed down again.”35 President Lincoln had complained to John Hay of Chase in October 1863: “Whenever he says [sees] that an important matter is troubling me, if I am compelled to decide it in a way to give offense to a man of some influence[,] he always ranges himself in opposition to me and persuades the victim that he has been hardly dealt by and that he (C) would have arranged it very differently.”36
Chase’s reply to Mr. Lincoln in February 1864 (a month when Chase was trying to launch his own presidential campaign) belied the fact that Bailey was the second top aide he had sent to New York to investigate the Custom House in the past four months: “I was surprised and pained by your letter this morning. Misrepresentations, I am sure, must have been made to you about the New York Custom House. I regret that I was not earlier consulted in a matter which so deeply concerns this Department & still trust, that before you take any definitive action, you will confer with me fully on the subject. I shall be ready at any hour which may suit your convenience.”37
Illness now interfered in the communication between Chase and Mr. Lincoln on the issue. President Lincoln replied that “I am unwell, even now, and shall be worse this afternoon. If you please, we will have an interview Monday.”38 Two days later, he wrote Chase: I have just called to see you on the matter mentioned Saturday, and am pained to learn you are suffering too much to be out. I hope you will soon be relieved; meanwhile, have no uneasiness as to the thing to which I am alluding, as I shall do nothing in it until I shall [have] fully conferred with you.”39 Chase then replied: “I was coming to see you this morning; for really I do not suffer at all. My right eye won’t bear much light; but I can get on pretty well with the left. So I could come with no other inconvenience than having one eye under bandage.”40 He asked delay in their meeting until the next day; his next communication came three days later: “My eye is so much better that I was able to do a little work at the Department yesterday, and am here again this afternoon. Whenever you summon me I shall attend you for conference about New York matters or otherwise.”41
Apparently, they met because President Lincoln wrote Chase on February 20 that “I do not perceive anything necessarily inconsistent with the practice of detectives, and others, engaged in the business of ‘rascal-catching;’ but a closer consideration might show it.”42 Apparently, a Treasury Department employee from Boston, Albert Hanscom, had been detailed to the New York Custom House to investigate corruption. Chase wrote President Lincoln on February 25 that his own investigator, Joshua Bailey, had arrived in the Capital and was ready to meet the president at his convenience.43 In the midst of this patronage controversy, President Lincoln learned of the distribution of the “Pomeroy Circular” advocating Chase’s candidacy for President. Chase offered to resign on February 22 and on February 29, the President wrote the Secretary: “Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not allow myself to consider from any stand-point other than my judgment of the public service; and, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change.”44
The controversy continued and President Lincoln sent John G. Nicolay to New York to confer with Thurlow Weed:
Mr. Weed was here at the Astor House on my arrival last Saturday morning, and I gave him the note you sent him.
He read it over, carefully once or twice and then said he did not quite understand it. He had written a letter to Judge Davis which the Judge had probably show you, but in that he had said nothing about Custom House matters.
He said that all the solicitude he had was in your behalf. You had told him in January last that you thought you would make a change in the Collectorship here, but that thus far it had not been done. He had told you he himself had no personal preference as to the particular man who is to be his [the present Collector’s] successor. He did not think Mr. Barney a bad man but thought him a weak one. His four deputies are constantly intriguing against you. Andrews is doing the same. Changes are constantly being made among the subordinates in the Custom House, and men turned out, for no other reason than that they take active part in primary meetings &c. in behalf of your re-nomination.
His only solicitude he said, was for yourself. He thought that if you were not strong enough to hold the Union men together through the next Presidential election, when it must necessarily undergo a great strain, the country was in the utmost danger of going to ruin.45
According to Weed, “A change in the Custom House was imperatively needed because one whose bureau in it had been engaged in treasonably aiding the rebellion.”46
President Lincoln again unsuccessfully pushed the Treasury Secretary to dismiss Barney on June 6, 1860. According to biographer Albert Bushnell Hart, President Lincoln had already offered Barney a diplomatic post. Earlier on June 6, according to Chase biographer John Niven, President Lincoln met with chase investigator Joshua Bailey, Niven wrote that Bailey “was unable to convince him of his truthfulness. In the afternoon after his interview with Bailey, Lincoln himself paid Chase a visit. The President opened the conversation on the persistent custom-house problem. After he gave his opinion, an unfavorable one about Bailey, he went on to speak of Barney’s replacement. Chase as usual was well prepared and his tone of voice was self-assured. He denied that Bailey had been so indiscreet to say what he was alleged to have said and he backed this statement up with a detailed account of Bailey’s activities.”47 Biographer Bushnell wrote: “This personal conference removed the difficulty for the time being; there is some reason to suppose that Chase again threatened to resign, and that the President again gave way.”48 (Noted biographer Niven: “The Bailey-Barney affair was just one more flagrant instance of Chase’s inability to judge correctly the character of his subordinates and his political coterie.”)49
The President and the Secretary exchanged names of possible replacements for Barney. The President recommended former Senator Preston King — although he undoubtedly knew that Simeon Draper and Abram Wakeman were the top candidates of Barney’s critics. “The New York faction convinced the president that a more forceful leader than Barney was needed to control the state’s patronage during the campaign,” wrote Chase biographer Frederick J. Blue. When the controversy over replacing John Cisco as Assistant Treasury Secretary for New York brought Chase’s resignation later in June 1864, it opened the way for other changes in New York patronage. Biographer Blue wrote: “With Chase gone from the cabinet and [new Treasury Secretary William P.]Fessenden not committed to Barney’s retention, Lincoln was free to make a change. As Barney explained to Chase, the president requested his resignation ‘as a personal and political favor of great value and importance to him.'”50
In late August John G. Nicolay was dispatched to New York to make the necessary job shifts. After a conference, Barney submitted his resignation. Simeon Draper, whom Chase biographer John Niven described as “Weed’s whimsical bagman,” was named to replace Barney.51 Barney remained loyal to to Chase — serving on a presidential organizing committee in 1868. He was at Chase’s side when he died.

Footnotes

  1. Reinhard H. Luthin, The Real Abraham Lincoln, p. 537 (Albany Evening Journal, July 1864).
  2. Alonzo Rothschild, Lincoln: Master of Men: A Study in Character, p. 200.
  3. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics, p. 121.
  4. Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Intimate Memories of Lincoln, p. 346-347 (From Thurlow Weed, Autobiography of Thurlow Weed).
  5. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 240.
  6. Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Intimate Memories of Lincoln, p. 347 (From Thurlow Weed, Autobiography of Thurlow Weed).
  7. Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and Some Women, p. 303.
  8. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 240.
  9. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 240 (Letter from Charles A. Dana to Salmon P. Chase, February 22, 1861).
  10. Albert Bushnell Hart, Salmon Portland Chase, p. 217-218.
  11. Sidney David Brummer, Political History of New York State During the Period of the Civil War, p. 136-137.
  12. David Donald, editor, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, p. 125 (September 8, 1862).
  13. David Donald, editor, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, p. 209 (October 5, 1863).
  14. David Donald, editor, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, p. 297.
  15. Alonzo Rothschild , Lincoln, Master of Men, p. 200.
  16. Ernest A. McKay, The Civil War and New York City, p. 236.
  17. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics, p. 233.
  18. Albert Bushnell Hart, Salmon Portland Chase, p. 311.
  19. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 362.
  20. Howard K. Beale, editor, The Diary of Edward Bates, p. 333 (February 13. 1864).
  21. Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden, So Fell the Angels, p. 134.
  22. Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden, So Fell the Angels, p. 102-103.
  23. Alonzo Rothschild, Lincoln, Master of Men, p. 200.
  24. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editor, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 92 (October 17, 1863).
  25. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editor, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 92 (October 17, 1863).
  26. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 352.
  27. Ernest A. McKay, The Civil War and New York City, p. 236.
  28. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 120 (Letter to Salmon P. Chase, January 11, 1864).
  29. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 120 (Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln, January 12, 1864).
  30. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 362-363.
  31. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 182 (Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1864).
  32. Robert B. Warden, An Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase, p. 556.
  33. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Volume I, p. 514 (January 23, 1864).
  34. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 345.
  35. Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and Some Women, p. 304.
  36. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editor, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 93 (October 18, 1863).
  37. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 181 (Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1864).
  38. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 182 (Letter to Salmon P. Chase, February 13, 1864).
  39. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 184 (Letter to Salmon P. Chase, February 15, 1864).
  40. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 184 (Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln, February 15, 1864).
  41. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 184 (Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln, February 18, 1864).
  42. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 195 (Letter to Salmon P. Chase, February 20, 1864).
  43. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 204 (Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln, February 25, 1864).
  44. Roy P. Basler, editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VII, p. 213 (Letter to Salmon P. Chase, February 29, 1864).
  45. Michael Burlingame, editor, With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860-1865, p. 132-133 (Letter to President Lincoln, March 30, 1864).
  46. Michael Burlingame, editor, With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860-1865, p. 132-133 (Letter to President Lincoln, March 30, 1864).
  47. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 363.
  48. Albert Bushnell Hart, Salmon Portland Chase, p. 315.
  49. John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward, p. 363.
  50. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase, A Life in Politics, p. 241.
  51. John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography, p. 371.