One would suppose, after this exhibition of magnanimity on the part of the President, that he would escape the criticism of Mr. Chase at least, but the latter still considered himself the inspired critic of the administration and sought the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. Nor was this all. His decisions upon the bench were in direct contradiction to the positions he had taken as a member of the Cabinet. He had criticised the President for his weakness in refusing to attack the doctrine of State rights, yet, on the first opportunity, he appeared as the judicial champion and defender of that doctrine; from his place on the bench he declared unconstitutional the Legal Tender Act which he had himself assisted in preparing and whose passage through the House of Representatives had been secured by his personal influence. While he was Secretary of the Treasury he sustained and encouraged Mr. Stanton in the exercise of the "war power" more earnestly and took more radical grounds than any other member of the Cabinet, yet when those very transactions came before the Supreme Court he denounced them as illegal and unjustified. The only explanation, the only apology that could be made by the friends of Mr. Chase was that his mind was soured by disappointment. He was a man of unbounded ambition, he had been working all his life to become President, he was convinced of his own great talents, and could not reconcile himself to disappointment. President Lincoln's character and methods are nowhere better illustrated than in the story of his relations with Edwin M. Stanton, his great Secretary of War, a man of intense personality, of arbitrary disposition, impetuous in action, impatient under restraint, and intolerant of opposition. Combined with these qualities Mr. Stanton had great learning, unselfish patriotism, and conscientious convictions of duty. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of Kenyon College, and when still young in years attained a high rank in the practice of his profession of the law, making his head-quarters first at Pittsburgh and in 1856 at Washington. He was born and bred in Democratic principles, but had a profound hatred of slavery, and during the administration of President Buchanan was pronounced in his opposition to the disunion schemes of the Southern politicians.