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The President of the United States in an office-seekers' convention would have had a placid time compared with the Freshmen. We didn't exactly use real axes on each other and we didn't actually tear any Freshman in two pieces, but we came as near the limit as was comfortable. No frat was safe for a minute with its guests. If you tried to feed 'em there was kerosene in the ice cream.
Many of the Southern sojourners had gone to their respective States, while others, some of them holding important civil, military, and naval positions, remained, truculent and defiant, to place every obstacle in the way of coercion by the Federal Government. The North sent an army of office-seekers to the metropolis, and Mr.
Lincoln at the Helm First Days in Washington Meeting Public Men and Discussing Public Affairs The Inauguration The Inaugural Address A New Era Begun Lincoln in the White House The First Cabinet The President and the Office-seekers Southern Prejudice against Lincoln Ominous Portents, but Lincoln not Dismayed The President's Reception Room Varied Impressions of the New President Guarding the White House.
One of these harangues in particular remains in my recollection. Like all good-natured members residing near the capital, 'Alonzo' was much plagued by office-seekers of all classes. Among these was a certain Madame Laplante of Hull, whose aspirations did not rise above a charwoman's place. She was unusually persistent.
He did this in the cipher-room of the War Department telegraph office, where he was accustomed to spend anxious hours waiting for news from the boys at the front, and also to seek what rest he could in thus hiding away from the never-ending stream of tormentors, office-seekers, politicians and emissaries of sage advice.
Efforts were made at home to procure for him the position of Secretary of Legation in London, which drew from him the remark, when they came to his knowledge, that he did not like to have his name hackneyed about among the office-seekers in Washington. Subsequently his brother William wrote him that Commodore Decatur was keeping open for him the office of Chief Clerk in the Navy Department.
Let us, however, guard strictly, at this point, against a possible misconception. It is not to be understood that these one hundred thousand citizens are simply "office-seekers," using the ordinary and offensive sense of the term. The activity in affairs which we describe is distinct from a sordid desire to grab the emoluments of office.
Had compensation, that the drill often reproduced that of Falstaff's heroes. But my campaigners would have fought well in case of emergency. Most of them office-seekers. When the alarm was over, the company dissolved, but each got a kind of certificate beautifully written and signed by Lincoln and Cameron. I refused to take such a certificate, we having had no occasion to fight.
Two or three months remained to the old administration, but all interest centred in the new one. The town began to swarm with office-seekers, among whom a young writer was lost. He drifted among them, unnoticed, glad to learn his work under cover of the confusion.
A horde of office-seekers besieged him in the White House. The parallel to this amazing picture can hardly be found in history. It was taken for granted that the new party would make a clean sweep of the whole civil list, that every government employee down to the humblest messenger boy too young to have political ideas was to bear the label of the victorious party. It was a motley horde.
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