I spoke to the President to-day about Blair, his Rockville
speech, and the action of the Union League of Philadelphia leaving out his name
in Resolutions electing the Cabinet honorary members of the League. He says Blair
is anxious to run Swann and beat Winter Davis. The President on the contrary
says that as Davis is the nominee of the Union Convention, and as we have
recognised him as our candidate, it would be mean to do anything against him
now.
Things in Maryland are badly mixed. The unconditional Union
people are not entirely acting in concert. Thomas seems acceptable to everyone.
Crisswell is going to make a good run. But Schenck is complicating the canvass
with an embarrassing element, that of forcible negro enlistments. The President
is in favor of the voluntary enlistment of the negroes with the consent of
their masters and on payment of the price. But Schenck's favorite way, (or
rather Birney's, whom Schenck approves) is to take a squad of soldiers into a
neighborhood and carry off into the army all the able-bodied darkies they can
find, without asking master or slave to consent. Hence results like the case of
White and Sothoron. “The fact is,” the Tycoon observes, “Schenck is wider
across the head in the region of the ears, and loves fight for its own sake,
better than I do.” . . .
SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and
Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 111-2; For the whole diary entry see
Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and
letters of John Hay, p. 105-6
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