With Malice Toward None: A Biography of Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen B. Oates

On Sunday, April 21, in an atmosphere of intense foreboding, Lincoln called his Cabinet Secretaries to an emergency meeting. With Washington trapped between a secessionist Virginia and a hostile Maryland, they unanimously agreed that Lincoln must assume broad emergency powers or let the government fall. Accordingly he directed that Welles empower several private individuals—including Welles’s own brother-in-law—to forward troops and supplies to embattled Washington. He allowed Cameron to authorize one Alexander Cummings and the governor of New York to transport troops and acquire supplies for the public defense. Because he thought the government was alive with traitors, Lincoln himself selected private citizens known for “their ability, loyalty, and patriotism” to spend public money without security, but without compensation either. He told Chase to advance two million dollars to three New Yorkers for the purpose of buying arms and making military preparations. Lincoln

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