MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 3d is just received.... Gen. C. has not been offered the Treasury and I think will not be. It seems to me not only highly proper but a _necessity_ that Gov. Chase shall take that place. His ability, firmness, and purity of character produce this propriety; and that he alone can reconcile Mr. Bryant and his class to the appointment of Gov. S. to the State Department produces the necessity. But then comes the danger that the protectionists of Pennsylvania will be dissatisfied; and to clear this difficulty Gen. C. must be brought to coöperate. He would readily do this for the War Department. But then comes the fierce opposition to his having any Department, threatening even to send charges into the Senate to procure his rejection by that body. Now, what I would most like, and what I think he should prefer too, under the circumstances, would be to retain his place in the Senate, and if that place has been promised to another let that other take a respectable and reasonably lucrative place abroad. Also, let Gen. C.'s friends be, with entire fairness, cared for in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. I may mention before closing that besides the very fixed opposition to Gen. C. he is more amply recommended for a place in the Cabinet than any other man.... Yours as ever, A. LINCOLN. It is easy to read two facts between these lines: first, that although Lincoln had written a letter four days earlier withdrawing his offer to Cameron, some influence had intervened to cause new hesitations; second, that Lincoln knew that Cameron ought not to be taken into the Cabinet at all, and that he was now seeking some way to buy him off. The cause of the new hesitation was that David Davis was clinging to him like a burr. The last observation in the letter to Trumbull, that Cameron was more amply recommended for a place in the Cabinet than any other man, points to the activity of Seward and Weed in Cameron's behalf, of which Welles gives details in the interview with Fogg above mentioned. Before Lincoln's letter of the 7th reached Trumbull, the latter wrote the following, giving his objections to Cameron more in detail: WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 1861. HON. A. LINCOLN,