Such hostility should, however, be accounted a crown of honor to Mr.Stanton.

He certainly came to the public service with patriotic and not with sordid motives, surrendering a most brilliant position at the bar, and with it the emolument of which in the absence of accumulated wealth his family was in daily need.
Mr.Stanton's observation and wide experience through the years of the war had taught him to distrust the Southern leaders.

Now that they had been subdued by force, yielding at the point of the bayonet when they could no longer resist, he did not believe that they should be regarded as returning prodigals to be embraced and wept over, for whom fatted calves should be killed, and who should be welcomed at once to the best in their father's house.

He thought rather that works meet for repentance should be shown by these offenders against the law both of God and man, that they should be held to account in some form for the peril with which they had menaced the Nation, and for the agony they had inflicted upon her loyal sons.

Mr.Stanton was therefore, by every impulse of his heart and by every conviction of his mind, favorable to the policy which the President had indicated, if not indeed assured, to the people.
Gideon Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, was a member of the original Cabinet of Mr.Lincoln.