Diary of Gideon Welles, Thursday, June 28, 1866

I understand that the Democratic Members of Congress have concluded to unite in the movement for the national convention of the 14th of August. I had some doubts whether they would readily come into it. Old party organizations and associations are strong. The Democratic papers have hesitated, and the New York World opposed the movement.

This opposition of the World is agreeable to Weed and company, and was intended by the New York Times, which was prompted by Weed and Seward, to foreshadow the convention and to assume that it was the Union Convention or Union Party Convention.

Senators Doolittle, Nesmith, Buckalew, and Harris and myself met in Colonel Cooper's room this evening, casually and accidentally. Most of the conversation was on the convention and the condition of parties. Harris is something of a trimmer, and, I perceive, a good deal embarrassed how to act, yet not prepared to take anti-Radical ground. Doolittle tried to persuade him that his true course was to go forward with the new movement, and, among other things, said that it was the movement which would ultimately prevail, — we should not succeed this fall but that the next election we should be successful. Of course such an admission would make such a calculating politician as Harris stick to the Radicals, for the next fall elections will be decisive of the Senatorial contest in New York. He will, therefore, under Doolittle's admission, go with the Radicals as the most likely way to secure his return to the Senate, — of which, however, there is not the remotest probability. He will be disappointed.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 542-3