Senator Hale called on me today. Was very plausible and
half-confidential. Baker, the detective, had been before his committee. Had
told many things of men in the Department. Lowering his voice, Hale said, “He
tells some things about your Chief Clerk that are very suspicious.” I cautioned
the Senator about receiving all the gossip and suspicion of Baker, who had no
powers of discrimination, little regard for truth, believed everything bad,
suspected everybody, and had no regard for the character and rights of any man.
Told him I would be answerable for the honesty of Faxon, that no truthful man
could doubt it, and that, having heard Baker's scandal and suspicion, I
requested him to bring me a fact, or find one if he could from his lying
detective.
This pitiful Senator is devoting his time and that of his
committee in a miserable attempt to bring reproach upon the Navy Department, to
make points against it, to pervert facts, and to defame men of the strictest
integrity. A viler prostitution of Senatorial position and place I have never
witnessed. The primary object is to secure a reelection for himself, and a love
of defamation attends it. Had a pleasant half-hour with Preston King, who made
a special call to see me. Few men in Congress are his equal for sagacity,
comprehensiveness, sound judgment, and fearlessness of purpose. Such statesmen
do honor to their State and country. His loss to the Senate cannot be supplied.
I like his successor, Morgan, who has good sense and will, in the main, make a
good Senator, but he cannot make King's place good. I know not who can. Why are
the services of such men set aside by small politicians? But King is making
himself useful, and has come to Washington from patriotic motives to advise
with our legislators and statesmen, and to cheer and encourage the soldiers.
I sometimes think he is more true to principles than I am
myself. Speaking of Fernando Wood, we each expressed a common and general
sentiment of surprise and disgust that any district could elect such a
Representative. But the whole city of New York is alike leprous and rotten.
This brought the question, How can such a place be regenerated and purified?
What is the remedy? While I expressed a reluctant conviction, which is
gradually coming over me, that in such a vicious community free suffrage was
abased, and it was becoming a problem whether there should not be an outside
movement, or some restriction on voting to correct palpable evil in municipal
government, King maintained the old faith and would let the evil correct
itself. If factious or partisan violence will go so far as to elect men like
Wood or Brooks; if men of property and character will prostitute themselves to
vote for them and consent to have their city misgoverned and themselves misrepresented,
let them take the consequences. The evil will correct itself. After they have
disgraced themselves sufficiently and loaded themselves with taxes and debt,
they will finally rouse to a sense of duty, and retrieve the city from misrule
and bad management and their district from misrepresentation. Such is the
reasoning of Preston King.
I felt a return of old enthusiasm of former years, when in
the security of youth I believed the popular voice was right, and that the
majority would come to right results in every community; but alas! experience
has shaken the confidence I once had. In an agricultural district, or a sparse
population the old rule holds, and I am not prepared to deny King's
conclusions, but my faith in the rectitude of the strange material that compose
a majority of the population of our large cities is not strong. The floating
mass who have no permanent abiding-place, who are the tools of men like Wood
and Brooks, who are not patriots but party demagogues, who have no fixed
purpose or principle, should not by their votes, control and overpower the
virtuous and good. Yet they do. Some permanent element is wanting in our
system. We need more stability and character. In our municipalities there needs
some modification for good government.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 522-4
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