The one embarrassing hitch came in the selection of a Secretary of War. It was the plan to have Senator Hugh L. White of Tennessee relinquish his seat for the War Office, thus opening the way for the election of Eaton to his old position in the Senate. But White was cold to the proposition. The mutual friends of the President and the Tennessee Senator importuned him to no effect. James K. Polk strongly urged him. Felix Grundy added his appeal. Another wrote him: “The old man says that all his plans will be defeated unless you agree to come.”[317] Jackson himself did not hesitate to go with White’s brother-in-law to Virginia to request Senator Tazewell, an intimate of White’s, to exert his influence--but to no avail. The reason for this refusal, furnished by a kinswoman, throws light on the general understanding as to the purpose of the Cabinet reorganization--he did not intend to “thereby aid in the elevation of Mr. Van Buren to the Presidency.”[318] Thus did Jackson’s earnest wish to serve his friends, the Eatons, fail at a critical juncture. After the place was also refused by Representative Drayton of South Carolina, an enemy of Nullification, Jackson turned to his old co-worker in the War of 1812, and Lewis Cass, then Governor of Michigan, entered the new Cabinet. This was probably Jackson’s personal appointment, albeit years before, while acting as judge advocate in the court-martial of General Hull, Van Buren had learned to his discomfiture that Cass was no ordinary man.[319] More successful in caring for his friend Isaac Hill than for the Eatons, a proffer of the Navy portfolio to Senator Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire created a senatorial vacancy that fell to the fighting journalist. Incidentally the relations between Van Buren and Woodbury were close.