“Cameron gratefully remembered”
It is proper to mention in this connection that the Cabinet change here described caused no change in the friendship between Lincoln and Cameron. Three or four months afterwards a violent factional assault upon the latter in the House of Representatives resulted in the passage of a resolution of censure, charging Cameron, while Secretary of War, with having adopted in certain transactions ” a policy highly injurious to the p.im public service.” As soon as Mr. Lincoln’s attention was called to the resolution, he wrote and transmitted to the House a special message explaining that the censured “transactions” occurred during the days of the first and extreme peril of the Grovernment, when Washington was cut off from communication with the North by the insurrection in Maryland; that the acts complained of were not done by Cameron exclusively, but were ordered by the President with the full assent of his Cabinet, every member of which, with himself, was equally responsible for the alleged irregularity. Cameron gratefully remembered this voluntary and manly defense of his official integrity. He remained one of the most intimate and devoted of Lincoln’s personal friends, and became one of the earliest and most effective advocates of his renomination and reelection to the Presidency.
Quoted in John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, Vol. I (New York: Century Co., 1917), p. 130. Vol. v.— 9