President Lincoln and His Cabinet
Not on view
Schussele’s drawing documents Lincoln's chief advisors early in the Civil War. Pictured from left to right are Edward Bates (Attorney General), Gideon Welles (Secretary of the Navy), Montgomery Blair (Postmaster General), William Henry Seward (Secretary of State), Salmon Portland Chase (Secretary of the Treasury), the President, General Winfield Scott (Chief of the Army), Caleb Blood Smith (Secretary of the Interior), and Simon Cameron (Secretary of War). The accurate furnishings and view through the window of an unfinished Washington Monument lend a sense of immediacy. The image was conceived to reassure viewers that Lincoln, regarded by many as an ill-prepared Westerner, was surrounded by experienced men (see 2013.634.2 for a related engraving, which lacks a publication line and may never have been issued, perhaps because Scott retired and Cameron had been replaced by February 1862).