In December, 1864, occurred one of the too-frequent cabals on the part of certain members of the Cabinet. Pressure was brought to bear upon Lincoln to get rid of Seward. Lincoln's reply made clear that he proposed to remain President. He says to the member reporting for himself and his associates the protest against Seward: "I propose to be the sole judge as to the dismissal or appointment of the members of my Cabinet." Lincoln could more than once have secured peace within the Cabinet and a smoother working of the administrative machinery if he had been willing to replace the typical and idiosyncratic men whom he had associated with himself in the government by more commonplace citizens, who would have been competent to carry on the routine responsibilities of their posts. The difficulty of securing any consensus of opinion or any working action between men differing from each other as widely as did Chase, Stanton, Blair, and Seward, in temperament, in judgment, and in honest convictions as to the proper policy for the nation, was an attempt that brought upon the chief daily burdens and many keen anxieties. Lincoln insisted, however, that it was all-important for the proper carrying on of the contest that the Cabinet should contain representatives of the several loyal sections of the country and of the various phases of opinion. The extreme anti-slavery men were entitled to be heard even though their spokesman Chase was often intemperate, ill-judged, bitter, and unfair. The Border States men had a right to be represented and it was all-essential that they should feel that they had a part in the War government even though their spokesman Blair might show himself, as he often did show himself, quite incapable of understanding, much less of sympathising with, the real spirit of the North. Stanton might be truculent and even brutal, but he was willing to work, he knew how to organise, he was devotedly loyal. Seward, scholar and statesman as he was, had been ready to give needless provocation to Europe and was often equally ill-judged in his treatment of the conservative Border States on the one hand and of the New England abolitionists on the other, but Seward was a patriot as well as a scholar and was a representative not only of New York but of the best of the Whig Republican sentiment of the entire North, and Seward could not be spared. It is difficult to recall in history a government made up of such discordant elements which through the patience, tact, and genius of one man was made to do effective work.