There is no real justification for astonishment over the decision of the conferees at the Wigwam to ask Senator John McPherson Berrien of Georgia to accept the position of Attorney-General. Not only was he a brilliant member of the Senate, noted as an orator, but his professional reputation in his section was almost as great as that of Webster in New England. His votes in the Senate on the party measures of the Adams Administration had been pleasing to Jackson, and, whether he was named as another gesture of good-will toward Calhoun, as generally assumed, or not, his appointment could not have been displeasing to the Vice-President. While the Postmaster-General had not hitherto been a member of the Cabinet, the Jackson board of strategy, wishing to manifest its appreciation of John McLean, who had held the post under Adams while exerting himself on behalf of Jackson, determined to raise the position to the Cabinet and retain him.[141] Thus the Cabinet was completed, and after a fashion indicative of no desire on the part of Jackson to quarrel with his Vice-President. Van Buren, who did not enter into the President’s calculations as to the succession, had been given the most desirable post, but his friends, McLane and Woodbury, had been set aside for Ingham and Branch, both devoted to the political fortunes of Calhoun. The latter was represented by half the Cabinet, Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, and no stretch of the imagination could make the other two members, Eaton and McLean, other than absolutely independent of the wily politician of Kinderhook. The processes through which all this was speedily changed enter into one of the most fascinating dramas of political intrigue in the history of the Republic. IV