This gave serious offense to many of Mr.Lincoln's most valued supporters, and was especially distasteful to the Union men of Maryland, with Henry Winter Davis at their head.

They regarded Mr.Blair as a non- resident, as not in any sense identified with them, and as disposed from the outset to foment disturbance where harmony was especially demanded.

Mr.Bates had been appointed from Missouri largely by the influence of Francis P.Blair, Jr.; and the border-State Republicans were dissatisfied that the only two members of the Cabinet from the slave States had been appointed apparently without any general consultation among those who were best fitted to give the President advice on so important a matter.

The extreme men in the Republican party, of the type of Benjamin F.Wade and Owen Lovejoy, believed that the Cabinet was so constituted as to insure what they termed "a disgraceful surrender to the South." It was a common saying at the time in Washington, among the radical Republicans, that Mr.Lincoln's Cabinet did not contain three as absolute and strong defenders of the Union as Dix, Holt, and Stanton, who had just retired with Mr.Buchanan.

Thaddeus Stevens, with his accustomed sharpness of speech, said the Cabinet was composed of an assortment of rivals whom the President appointed from courtesy, one stump-speaker from Indiana, and two representatives of the Blair family.
In the seven States which constituted the original Southern Confederacy, the flag of the United States was flying at only three points on the day of Mr.Lincoln's inauguration.