As president, Abraham Lincoln put his three rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination in his cabinet: William Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates. Later he added Edwin Stanton, who years earlier had called him a “damned long-armed ape.” Bates wrote in his diary that Lincoln “lacks will and purpose.”
Lincoln gave his reason: “We needed the strongest men of the party in the cabinet.” He said he “had no right to deprive the country of their services.” Seward came to a different verdict over time: “the President is the best of us.”