Diary of Gideon Welles: Saturday, July 18, 1863

Have a letter from Governor Andrew, who in a matter misrepresented me; claims to have been led into error by the “Gloucester men,” and is willing to drop the subject.¹ I shall not object, for the Governor is patriotic and zealous as well as somewhat fussy and fanatical.

General Marston and others, a delegation from New Hampshire with a letter from the Governor, wanted additional defenses for Portsmouth. Letters from numerous places on the New England coast are received to the same effect. Each of them wants a monitor, or cruiser, or both. Few of them seem to be aware that the shore defenses are claimed by and belong to the War, rather than the Navy, Department, nor do they seem to be aware of any necessity for municipal and popular effort for their own protection.

Two delegations are here from Connecticut in relation to military organizations for home work and to preserve the peace. I went to the War Department in their behalf, and one was successful, perhaps both.

There is some talk, and with a few, a conviction, that we are to have a speedy termination of the war. Blair is confident the Rebellion is about closed. I am not so sanguine. As long as there is ability to resist, we may expect it from Davis and the more desperate leaders, and when they quit, as they will if not captured, the seeds of discontent and controversy which they have sown will remain, and the social and political system of the insurrectionary States is so deranged that small bodies may be expected to carry on for a time, perhaps for years, a bushwhacking warfare. It will likely be a long period before peace and contentment will be fully restored. Davis, who strove to be, and is, the successor of Calhoun, without his ability, but with worse intentions, is ambitious and has deliberately plunged into this war as the leader, and, to win power and fame, has jeopardized all else. The noisy, gasconading politicians of the South who figured in Congress for years and had influence have, in their new Confederacy, sunk into insignificance. The Senators and Representatives who formerly loomed up in Congressional debate in Washington, and saw their harangues spread before the country by a thousand presses, have all been dwarfed, wilted, and shriveled. The “Confederate Government,” having the element of despotism, compels its Congress to sit with closed doors. Davis is the great “I am.”

In the late military operations of the Rebels he has differed with Lee, and failed to heartily sustain that officer. It was Lee's plan to uncover Washington by inducing Hooker to follow him into Pennsylvania. Hooker fell into the trap and withdrew everything from here, which is surprising, for Halleck's only study has been to take care of himself and not fall into Rebel hands. But he felt himself safe if Hooker and the army were between him and Lee.

From the interrupted dispatches and other sources, it is ascertained that Lee's plan was the concentration of a force of 40,000 men at Culpeper to rush upon Washington when our army and the whole Potomac force was far away in the Valley of the Cumberland. But Davis, whose home is in Mississippi and whose interest is there, did not choose to bring Beauregard East. The consequence has been the frustration of Lee's plans, which have perished without fruition. He might have been disappointed, had he been fairly seconded. Davis has undoubtedly committed a mistake. It hastens the end. Strange that such a man as Davis, though possessing ability, should mislead and delude millions, some of whom have greater intellectual capacity than himself. They were, however, and had been, in a course of sectional and pernicious training under Calhoun and his associates, who for thirty years devoted their time and talents to the inculcation first of hate, and then of sectional division, or a reconstruction of the federal government on a different basis. Nullification was an outgrowth. When Calhoun closed his earthly career several men of far less ability sought to wear his mantle. I have always entertained doubts whether Calhoun intended a dismemberment of the Union. He aimed to procure special privileges for the South, — something that should secure perpetuity to the social and industrial system of that section, which he believed, not without reason, was endangered by the increasing intelligence and advancing spirit of the age. Many of the lesser lights — shallow political writers and small speech-makers — talked flippantly of disunion, which they supposed would enrich the South and impoverish the North. “Cotton is king,” they said and believed, and with it they would dictate terms not only to the country but the world. The arrogance begotten of this folly led to the great Rebellion.

Davis is really a despot, exercising arbitrary power, and the people of the South are abject subjects, demoralized, subdued, but frenzied and enraged, with little individual independence left, — an impoverished community, hurrying to swift destruction. “King Cotton” furnishes them no relief. Men are not permitted in that region of chivalry to express their views if they tend to national unity. Hatred of the Union, of the government, and of the country is the basis of the Confederate despotism. Hate, sectional hate, is really the fundamental teaching of Calhoun and his disciples. How is it to be overcome and when can it be eradicated? It has been the growth of a generation, and abuse of the doctrine of States' rights, — a doctrine sound and wholesome in our federal system when rightly exercised. But when South Carolina in 1832 assumed the sovereign right of nullifying the laws of the government of which she was a member, — defeating by State action the federal authority and setting it at defiance, — claiming to be a part of the Union but independent of it while yet a part, her position becomes absolutely contradictory and untenable. Compelled to abandon the power and absolute right of a State to overthrow the government which she helped to create, or destroy federal jurisdiction, the nullifiers, still discontented, uneasy, and ambitious, resorted to another expedient, that of withdrawing from the Union, and, by combining with other States, establishing power to resist the government and country. Sectionalism or a combination of States was substituted for the old nullification doctrine of States' rights. If they could not remain in the Union and nullify its laws, they could secede and disregard laws and government. Can it be extinguished in a day? I fear not. It will require time.

It is sad and humiliating to see men of talents, capacity, and of reputed energy and independence, cower and shrink and humble themselves before the imperious master who dominates over the Confederacy. Political association and the tyranny of opinion and of party first led them astray, and despotism holds them in the wrong as with a vise. The whole political, social, and industrial fabric of the South is crumbling to ruins. They see and feel the evil, but dare not attempt to resist it. There is little love or respect for Davis among such intelligent Southern men as I have seen.

Had Meade done his duty, we should have witnessed a speedy change throughout the South. It is a misfortune that the command of the army had not been in stronger hands and with a man of broader views, and that he had not a more competent superior than Halleck. The late infirm action will cause a postponement of the end. Lee has been allowed to retreat — to retire — unmolested, with his army and guns, and the immense plunder which the Rebels have pillaged. The generals have succeeded in prolonging the war. Othello's occupation is not yet gone.

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1 This refers to the statement, in a letter of July 1, from Governor Andrew to Secretary Welles, that the Navy Department had sent no vessels to the defense of the Massachusetts coast till after the Confederate cruiser Tacony “had rioted along the Vineyard Sound for four days.” The Secretary, under date of July 11, showed the incorrectness of this allegation, and Governor Andrew, in his letter of the 16th, withdrew it and explained that it was made “upon the authority of municipal officers and citizens of Gloucester.”

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 375-9

Diary of John Hay: January 2, 1864

Point Lookout. The President and Secretary of War to-day (Jan. 2, 1864), commissioned me to go down to Point Lookout, and deliver to Gen. Marston the book of oaths and the accompanying blanks, and explain to him the mode in which they are to be used. Gen. Butler was ordered by telegraph to meet me there and consult as to the manner of carrying out the President's plan for pardoning and enlisting the repentant rebels. I bore a letter for Gen. Butler’s instruction.

I went on board a little tug at the Seventh Street Wharf, and rattled and rustled through the ice to Alexandria where I got on board the Clyde, most palatial of steam tugs, fitted up with a very pretty cabin and berths heated by steam and altogether sybaritic in its appointments.

The day was bitterly cold, and the wind was malignant on the Potomac. I shut myself up in my gorgeous little cabin and scribbled and read and slept all day. The captain thought best to lay to for a while in the night, so we put in at Smith's Creek, and arrived at Point Lookout in the early morning. I went to the head-quarters of the General, accompanied by a young officer who asked my name and got it. I felt little interest in his patronymic, and it is now gone into the oblivion of those ante Agamemnona. It was so cold that nobody was stirring. A furry horse was crouching by the wall. “Hello, Billy! cold! Ain't it?” said my companion. Billy was indignantly silent. We stumbled on over the frozen ground past the long line of cottages that line the beach, built by the crazy proprietor of the land who hoped to make here a great watering-place which would draw the beauty and fashion of the country away from Long Branch, and make Newport a Ranz des Vaches. We came up to a snug-looking frame house which had been the dwelling of the adventurous lunatic. A tall young man, with enormous blonde moustache and a general up-too-early air about him, hove in sight, and my guide and friend introduced me. “Yes, I have heard of you, Mr. Hale. I got a despatch from the General saying you would be here. When did you arrive, Mr. Kay? Rather cold weather! Any ice on the river, Mr. Day?” All this in a voice like a rumbling of distant thunder, measured and severe, and with a manner of preternatural solemnity. “The General will soon be up, Mr. Hayes.” My mild insinuation as to my cognomen having brought him that near to my christening at last.

He disappeared, and coming back beckoned me out. I followed him across a little entry into a room opposite. There stood in the attitude in which, if Comfort ever were deified, the statues should be posed, — parted coat-tails, — a broad plenilunar base exposed to the grateful warmth of the pine-wood fire, — a hearty Yankee gentleman, clean-shaven, — sunny and rosy, — to whom I was presented, and who said laconically, “Sit there!” pointing to a warm seat by a well-spread breakfast table. I had an appetite engendered by a day and night of river air, and I ate breakfast till the intelligent contraband, who served us, caught the infection and plied me with pork-steaks till hunger cried quarter. The General told a good yarn on a contraband soldier who complained of a white man abusing him: — “I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cuffin, but he must speck de unicorn.”

The General's flock are a queer lot. Dirty, ragged, yet jolly. Most of them are still rebellious, but many are tired and ready to quit, while some are actuated by a fierce desire to get out of the prison, and by going into our army, avenge the wrongs of their forced service in the rebel ranks.

They are great traders. A stray onion, — a lucky treasure-trove of a piece of coal, — is a capital for extensive operations in Confederate trash. They sell and gamble away their names with utter recklessness. They have the easy carelessness of a about their patronymics. They sell their names when drawn for a detail to work, a great prize in the monotonous life of every day. A small-pox patient sells his place on the sick-list to a friend who thinks the path to Dixie easier from the hospital than the camp. The traffic in names on the morning of Gen. Butler’s detail of 500 for exchange was as lively as Wall Street on days when Taurus climbs the Zenith, or the “Coal Hole” when gold is tumbling ten per cent. an hour.

They live in a 30-acre lot fenced around by themselves. They put up the fence with great glee, saying, “they would fence out the d----d Yankees and keep respectable.”

Rather a pleasant place, on a pleasant day, is Point Lookout. To-day it was dreary and cold. I could not but think of the winter life of the sanguine lunatic who built the little village intended for the summer home of beauty and chivalry, and destined for the malodorous abode and the unfragrant belongings of a great hospital in busy war-times.

My little boat got frightened at the blow that freshened in the evening, and I sent her up to snooze the night away in Smith's Creek.

In the dusk of the evening Gen. Butler came clattering into the room where Marston and I were sitting, followed by a couple of aides. We had some hasty talk about business: — he told me how he was administering the oath at Norfolk; how popular it was growing; children cried for it; how he hated the Jews; how heavily he laid his hand on them; — “A nation that the Lord had been trying to make something of for three thousand years, and had so far utterly failed.” “King John knew how to deal with them — fried them in swine's fat.”

After drinking cider we went down to the Hudson City, the General's flagship. His wife, niece and excessively pretty daughter; tall, statuesque and fair, and named, by a happy prophecy of the blonde beauty of her maturity, Blanche, were there at tea. I sent my little web-footed sulky word to get home as she could, and sailed with the Butler’s for Baltimore.

At night, after the ladies had gone off to bed — they all said retired, but I suppose it meant the same thing in the end, — we began to talk about some queer matters. Butler had some odd stories about physical sympathies; he talked also about the Hebrew jurisprudence and showed a singular acquaintance with biblical studies; his occasional references to anatomy and physiology evidently surprised the surgeon, to whom he respectfully deferred from time to time. He talked till it grew late and we dispersed to bed. I slept on the guards: a pleasant bed-room, but chilly; and listened till I slept, to the cold and shuddering roar of the water under the wheels.

At Baltimore we took a special car and came home. I sat with the General all the way and talked with him about many matters; Richmond and its long immunity. He says he can take an army within thirty miles of Richmond without any trouble; from that point the enemy can either be forced to fight in the open field south of the city; or submit to be starved into surrender.

He was very severe on McClellan for his action about the New Orleans expedition. He says that before the expedition was resolved on, by the President, McClellan said it would require 50,000 men; after it was resolved on, he said 5,000 would be enough. He said he did not like to attack McC. Nil nisi bonum, etc. But he might have to exploit that matter sometime.

I told him of the night of October 21.

He gave me some very dramatic incidents of his recent action in Fortress Monroe, smoking out adventurers and confidence men, testing his detectives, and matters of that sort. He makes more business in that sleepy, little Department than anyone would have dreamed was in it.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 146-52; for the entire diary entry see Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letter of John Hay, p. 148-51.