as I had many times before, and he gave a peremptory order to one
of his staff that I should receive the documents in time for me
to leave Washington on the midnight train.

The magical transformation was the result of a personal visit of
President Lincoln to the secretary of war. Mr. Lincoln carried
the State of New York by a majority of only 6,749, and it was
a soldiers' vote that gave him the Empire State.

The compensations of my long delay in Washington trying to move
the War Department were the opportunity it gave me to see
Mr. Lincoln, to meet the members of the Cabinet, to become intimate
with the New York delegation in Congress, and to hear the wonderful
adventures and stories so numerous in Washington.

The White House of that time had no executive offices as now,
and the machinery for executive business was very primitive.
The east half of the second story had one large reception-room,
in which the president could always be found, and a few rooms
adjoining for his secretaries and clerks. The president had very
little protection or seclusion. In the reception-room, which was
always crowded at certain hours, could be found members of Congress,
office-seekers, and an anxious company of fathers and mothers
seeking pardons for their sons condemned for military offenses,
or asking permission to go to the front, where a soldier boy was
wounded or sick. Every one wanted something and wanted it very
bad. The patient president, wearied as he was with cares of state,
with the situation on several hostile fronts, with the exigencies
in Congress and jealousies in his Cabinet, patiently and
sympathetically listened to these tales of want and woe. My position