No attempt was made to present or count the
votes of Arkansas and Tennessee, and the president of the Senate acted
under the joint resolution and not under the joint rule. Yet the vote of
West Virginia was counted, and it was not easy to show that her title
was not under a legal cloud fully as dark as that which shadowed
Arkansas and Tennessee.
* * * * *
When Mr. Lincoln said concerning his reelection, that the element of
personal triumph gave him no gratification, he spoke far within the
truth. He was not boasting of, but only in an unintentional way
displaying, his dispassionate and impersonal habit in all political
relationships,--a distinguishing trait, of which history is so chary of
parallels that perhaps no reader will recall even one. A striking
instance of it occurred in this same autumn. On October 12, 1864, the
venerable Chief Justice Taney died, and at once the friends of Mr. Chase
named him for the succession. There were few men whom Mr. Lincoln had
less reason to favor than this gentleman, who had only condescended to
mitigate severe condemnation of his capacity by mild praise of his
character, who had hoped to displace him from the presidency, and who,
in the effort to do so, had engaged in what might have been stigmatized
even as a cabal. Plenty of people were ready to tell him stories
innumerable of Chase's hostility to him, and contemptuous remarks about
him; but to all such communications he quietly refused to give ear.
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