No other man in politics, indeed no other man who had ever been in politics in this country, could--his admirers said--have brought together so many hostile interests and made so fantastic a combination.
Some men went so far as to maintain that he would "rope in the President himself before the old man had time to swap knives with him." The beauty of his work consisted in the skill with which he evaded questions of principle.

As he wisely said, the issue now involved was not one of principle but of power.
The fate of that noble party to which they all belonged, and which had a record that could never be forgotten, depended on their letting principle alone.

Their principle must be the want of principles.

There were indeed individuals who said in reply that Ratcliffe had made promises which never could be carried out, and there were almost superhuman elements of discord in the combination, but as Ratcliffe shrewdly rejoined, he only wanted it to last a week, and he guessed his promises would hold it up for that time.
Such was the situation when on Monday afternoon the President-elect arrived in Washington, and the comedy began.

The new President was, almost as much as Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Pierce, an unknown quantity in political mathematics.