Cameron later maintained that he was fired because of his antislavery principles, but that seems unlikely, though many at the time believed it was so. William P. Fessenden accurately observed that “Cameron did not leave the department on account of his Slavery views,” which “were the same as those of Mr Chase and others, who remain.” (A case in point was Welles, whose annual report describing his policy of sheltering fugitive slaves and hiring them for the navy was more radical than Cameron’s, yet the navy secretary was not reprimanded; he stayed in the cabinet throughout Lincoln’s administration.) As Fessenden put it, Cameron simply “could not manage so large a concern,” for he “had neither the capacity nor strength of will.” As a result, “there was great mismanagement. He did his best, but his best was not enough.” Welles concurred, noting that Cameron lacked “the grasp, power, energy, comprehension, and important qualities essential to the administration of the War Department.” Among Cameron’s most widely criticized shortcomings were his “worse than equivocal antecedents; his swarms of corrupt hangers-on and contract-hunting friends; his repeated and persistent attempts to enrich his Pennsylvania favorites at the expense of the people,” and his lack of “a single military instinct” or a “comprehensive and organizing executive faculty.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃