The source
of discordance was not near the surface; it was in the system of
"patronage" and "recognition," and deep in the characteristics of the
individuals.
It is not true that Mr. Blaine was fierce for war upon Conkling; he
thought a fight was inevitable, and that the time for the President
to assert himself was at the beginning; and said so. "Fight now if at
all," said Blaine then to Garfield, "for your administration tapers!"
As to his personal wishes, he was often overruled in the cabinet,
and took it complacently. But he was warlike on the point that the
President was entitled to be friendly with his friends, and must not
be personally oppressed.
One day Mr. Conkling in the Senate had one of the New York
appointments pleasing to him taken up and confirmed, leaving half a
dozen others, about evenly divided between his own and the President's
favorites. Then came a crisis; and it was represented to the President
that he should pull those appointments out of the Senate at once,
before Conkling's power was further exhibited; and that if he did not,
the bootblacks at Willard's would know that the Senator, and not the
President, was first in affairs.
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