Governor E. D. Morgan was yesterday elected Senator in place
of Preston King. If the latter was not to be returned, Morgan was probably the
best of the competitors. He will make a useful Senator if he can persistently
carry out his honest convictions, but I know of no one who can, just at this
time, make good the place of King. He has been cheated and deceived. The
country sustains a loss in his retirement. He is honest, faithful, unselfish,
and earnestly patriotic.
We have the whole world agog with an account of an onset on
our fleet before Charleston. The Mercedita is reported to have been surprised
and sunk, and other vessels damaged. But the great hullabaloo is over a report
that the whole blockading fleet ran away, — the foreign consuls at Charleston went
out and could see none of the vessels,—and the blockade is by the Rebels
declared raised. Seward called on me in great trepidation with these tidings.
Told him most of the stuff was unworthy of a moment's consideration. Not
unlikely the Mercedita may have been surprised and sunk, as she is of light
draft and was probably close in. If there had been other vessels captured or
sunk, we should have had their names. It looked to me as if the budget was made
up for the European market by the foreign consuls, who are in fact Rebel
agents, and I asked why their exequaturs were not annulled.
The New York papers have sensation headings over the
Charleston news, and the Tribune has a ridiculous article about
blockade, more wild, if possible, than Seward.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 232-3
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