"With malice
toward none, with charity for all," the foremost of the victors would
have personified in himself the genius of reconciliation.
He might have rendered the country a great service in another direction.
A few days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed out to a friend the
crowd of office-seekers besieging his door. "Look at that," said he.
"Now we have conquered the rebellion, but here you see something that may
become more dangerous to this republic than the rebellion itself." It is
true, Lincoln as President did not profess what we now call civil service
reform principles. He used the patronage of the government in many cases
avowedly to reward party work, in many others to form combinations and to
produce political effects advantageous to the Union cause, and in still
others simply to put the right man into the right place. But in his
endeavors to strengthen the Union cause, and in his search for able and
useful men for public duties, he frequently went beyond the limits of his
party, and gradually accustomed himself to the thought that, while party
service had its value, considerations of the public interest were, as to
appointments to office, of far greater consequence.
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