No other appointments to the Cabinet were made known in advance, even to those for whom they were intended. The other Ministers first read their names in the newspapers on the 5th of March. A few days before the inauguration, Adolph E. Borie, of Philadelphia was in Washington, and on the 3d of March he called on the President-elect. Grant had given orders that no visitor whatever should be received; for he had only a few hours left in which he intended to close his business as General-in-Chief. But when Borie was refused admission he sent his card to me, and begged me to procure him two or three moments' audience. He had two friends with him from Philadelphia whom he was extremely anxious to present to Grant, and he promised not to remain nor to mention politics. Accordingly I suggested that as Borie had been so good a friend he should be accorded a moment's interview. Grant acquiesced, and Borie and his friends came in. There had been a vast deal of talk in the newspapers about a Cabinet Minister from Pennsylvania, and Grant at once inquired: ‘Well, Mr. Borie, have you come to learn the name of the man from Pennsylvania?’ Borie disclaimed any curiosity, and two days afterward, returning to Philadelphia, he read on the train that his own name had been sent to the Senate as Secretary of the Navy. He was ‘the man from Pennsylvania,’ and that was the first he knew about it.
Grant, indeed, at this time, looked upon Cabinet Ministers as on staff officers, whose personal relations with himself were so close that they should be chosen for personal reasons; a view that his experience in civil affairs somewhat modified. If he had served a third term in the Presidency, his selections for the Cabinet would hardly have been made
