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CHAPTER III ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT BUCHANAN
Two days after Mr. Buchanan\'s inauguration, the nominations for the Cabinet were sent to the Senate. The venerable Lewis Cass, with many years of honorable service behind him, was Secretary of State,—selected, the "Old-Line Whigs" said, because the President meant really to be Secretary of State himself, and he wished an amiable first assistant. Moreover, he liked to say "old Lewis Cass," as though he were himself so much younger. Hon. Howell Cobb of Georgia had the Treasury Department. He was a man of political ability, "frank and genial," sagacious and conservative, "qualities fitting him well to dominate his associates." Mr. Floyd, who "belonged to the first families of Virginia," was the Secretary of War. Mr. Toucey of Connecticut was Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Brown of Tennessee, Postmaster-General, and Judge Jeremiah Black, Attorney-General,—three from the North, four from the South. The new Cabinet, people said, was far inferior in capacity to the retiring one.