Diary of Gideon Welles: Wednesday, March 15, 1865

A rumor is prevalent and very generally believed that the French mission has been offered Bennett of the New York Herald. I discredit it. On one or two occasions this mission has been alluded to in Cabinet, but the name of B. was never mentioned or alluded to. There are sometimes strange and unaccountable appointments made, but this would be more disreputable that that of J. P. Hale.  Not that B. has not more fitness and higher qualifications than H., but the latter has position from his state. I think B. with his bad reputation an honester & better man than Hale.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 258; William E. Gienapp & Erica L. Gienapp, Editors, The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincolns Secretary of the Navy, p. 603-5

Diary of Gideon Welles: Thursday, March 16, 1865

Mr. Blair wishes a young friend paroled, and requests me to see the President. I am disinclined to press these individual cases on the President. Mrs. Tatnall, wife of the Rebel commodore, desires to come North to her friends in Connecticut. Mrs. Welles, wife of Albert Welles, wants a permit to go to Mobile to join her husband. Miss Laura Jones, an old family acquaintance, wishes to go to Richmond to meet and marry her betrothed. These are specimen cases.

Blair believes the President has offered the French mission to Bennett. Says it is the President and not Seward, and gives the reasons which lead him to that conclusion. He says he met Bartlett, the (runner) of Bennett, here last August or September; that Bartlett sought him, said they had abused him, B., in the Herald but thought much of him, considered him the man of most power in the Cabinet, but were dissatisfied because he had not controlled the Navy Department early in the Administration and brought it into their (the Herald's) interest. Blair replied that the Herald folks had never yet learned or understood the Secretary of the Navy; that he was a hardheaded and very decided man in his opinions. He says Bartlett then went on to tell him that he was here watching movements and that they did not mean this time to be cheated. It was, Blair says, the darkest hour of the administration, and when the President himself considered his prospect of a reelection almost hopeless.  Soon after the Herald went for the re election and he has little doubt that the President made some promise or assurance at that time.  At a later day, Bartlett alluded again to the matter, and he told him if he had got the President’s word he might rely upon it implicitly.  This has some plausibility and there may have been something to encourage the Herald folks, but I cannot believe the President promised, or will give him the French Mission.

I am sorry to hear Blair speak approvingly of the appointment of Bennett. A vagabond editor without character for such an appointment, whose whims are often wickedly and atrociously leveled against the best men and the best causes, regardless of honor or right. As for Bartlett, he is a mercenary rascal who sought to use the Navy Department and have himself made the agent to purchase the vessels for the Navy. Because I would not prostitute my office and favor his brokerage, he threatened me with unceasing hostility and assaults, not only from the Herald but from nearly every press in New York. He said he could control them all. I was incredulous as to his influence over other journals, and at all events shook him off, determined to have nothing to do with him. In a very short time I found the papers slashing and attacking me, editorially and through correspondents. Washburne, Van Wyck, Dawes, J. P. Hale, and others coöperated with them, perhaps intentionally; most certainly they were, intentionally or otherwise, the instruments of the combination of correspondents led on by this Bartlett, who boasted of his work and taunted me through others.

But the New York press was unable to form a public sentiment hostile to the administration of the Navy Department. There were a few, very few, journals in other parts of the country that were led astray by them, and some of the frivolous and surface scum of idle loungers echoed the senseless and generally witless efforts to depreciate my labors, but the people and a large portion of the papers proved friendly. The New York Tribune was, while professing friendship, the most malicious and mean; the Times and the Herald were about alike; the Evening Post gave me a halting support; the Express was, as usual, balderdash; the Journal of Commerce in more manly opposition; the Commercial Advertiser alone was at that time fair and honestly friendly. Most of the weeklies were vehicles of blackguardism against me by the combined writers. Although somewhat annoyed by these concerted proceedings in New York and Washington, formed for mischief, I was too much occupied to give much heed to the villainous and wicked course pursued against me.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 258-60; William E. Gienapp & Erica L. Gienapp, Editors, The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincolns Secretary of the Navy, p. 603-5

Abraham Lincoln to James G. Bennett, May 21, 1862

Private

Executive Mansion

May 21, 1862.

James G. Bennett, Esq

Dear Sir:

Thanking you again for the able support given by you, through the Herald, to what I think the true cause of the country, and also for your kind expressions towards me personally, I wish to correct an erroneous impression of yours in regard to the Secretary of War. He mixes no politics whatever with his duties; knew nothing of Gen. Hunter's proclamation; and he and I alone got up the counter-proclamation. I wish this to go no further than to you, while I do wish to assure you it is true.

Yours truly

A. LINCOLN

SOURCE: Roy P. Basler, Editor, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5, p. 225

Diary of John Hay, September 23, 1864

Senator Harlan thinks that Bennett’s support is so important, especially considered as to its bearing on the soldier vote, that it would pay to offer him a foreign mission for it, and so told me. Forney has also had a man talking to the cannie Scot who asked plumply, “Will I be a welcome visitor at the White House if I support Mr. Lincoln?” What a horrible question for a man to be able to ask! So thinks the President apparently. It is probable that Bennett will stay about as he is, thoroughly neutral, balancing carefully until the October elections, and will then declare for the side which he thinks will win. It is better in many respects to let him alone.

SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 221; Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 229-30

Diary of John Hay: April 30, 1864

. . . . The President came loafing in as it grew late and talked about the reception which his Hodges letter had met with. He seemed rather gratified that the Tribune was in the main inspired by a kindly spirit in its criticism. He thought of, and found, and gave to me to decipher Greeley’s letter to him of the 29th July, 1861. This most remarkable letter still retains for me its wonderful interest as the most insane specimen of pusillanimity that I have ever read. When I had finished reading, Nicolay said: — “That would be nuts to the Herald, Bennet would willingly give $10,000 for that.” To which the President, tying the red-tape round the package, answered, — “I need $10,000 very much, but he couldn't have it for many times that.”

The President has been powerfully reminded by General Grant’s present movements and plans, of his (President's) old suggestion so constantly made and as constantly neglected, to Buell and Halleck et al., to move at once upon the enemy's whole line so as to bring into action our great superiority in numbers. Otherwise, by interior lines and control of the interior railroad system, the enemy can shift their men rapidly from one point to another as they may be required. In this concerted movement, however, great superiority of numbers must tell; as the enemy, however successful where he concentrates, must necessarily weaken other portions of his line and lose important positions. This idea of his own, the President recognized with especial pleasure when Grant said it was his intention to make all the line useful — those not fighting could help the fighting: — “Those not skinning, can hold a leg,” added his distinguished interlocutor.

It seems that Banks’ unhappy Red River expedition was undertaken at the order and under the plan of General Sherman, who, having lived at Alexandria, had a nervous anxiety to repossess the country. Grant assented from his confidence in Sherman, and Halleck fell into the plan. Had not this wasteful enterprise been begun, Banks would now be thundering at the gates of Mobile and withdrawing a considerable army from Sherman’s front at Chattanooga.

Sherman has asked for an extension from the 2d to the 5th to complete his preparation against Dalton. He says that Thomas’ and Schofield’s armies will be within one day's march of Dalton by to-night, and that McPherson will be on time.

A little after midnight, as I was writing those last lines, the President came into the office laughing, with a volume of Hood’s Works in his hand, to show Nicolay and me the little caricature, “An unfortunate Bee-ing,” seemingly utterly unconscious that he, with his short shirt hanging about his long legs, and setting out behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at. What a man it is! Occupied all day with matters of vast moment, deeply anxious about the fate of the greatest army of the world, with his own fame and future hanging on the events of the passing hour, he yet has such a wealth of simple bonhommie and goodfellowship, that he gets out of bed and perambulates the house in his shirt to find us that we may share with him the fun of poor Hood's queer little conceits. . . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 188-91; See Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House,: the complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 192-4 for the full entry. For the illustration of “An unfortunate Bee-ing” see Thomas Hood, Hood's Own: Or, Laughter from Year to Year, p. 217

George William Curtis to John J. Pinkerton, February 17, 1863

February 17, 1863.

The fate of the country is being settled in this lull. If it awakes divided, we have a long, sharp fight before us all. The instinct of union, if not stronger than that of liberty, in this people, as Mr. Seward once said, is yet too strong to be squelched like a tallow dip. There was never but one government that merely tumbled down and died, and that was Louis Philippe's! We are too young, and the government has been too long consciously a general benefit, to allow such a result here. Even Vallandigham, braying to Copperheads in New Jersey, is obliged to say that he is for union. John Van Crow has jumped to the dominant tune, and the wayward sisters are rebels to be put down. The “Herald” is afraid of the “Express” and “World” for rushing reaction into absurdity, and plants itself square upon war. Bennett told Mahoney, when he asked him to print his letter, that he was a damned fool.

When the question is fairly put, “Shall we whittle this great sovereign power down to a Venezuela or Guatemala?” if the soul of the people does not snort scorn and defiance, then good-night to Marmion.

I feel steadily cheerful, and yet, as you know, I am a traveler, not a recluse.

Do you mean that you have evacuated West Chester finally? What says MacVeagh? My friendly regards to him if ever you write.

Faithfully yours,

George William Curtis.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 163

William Cullen Bryant to John M. Forbes, August 27, 1861

Office Of The Evening Post,

New York, August 27, 1861.

I do not much like the idea of putting Sherman into the Treasury Department. He would make, I think, a better secretary of war. The great objection I have to him in the Treasury Department is that, so far as I understand the matter, he is committed, as the saying is, to that foolish Morrill tariff. Yet I am very certain that it would be considered by the country an immense improvement of the Cabinet to place him in the War Department. The country has a high opinion of his energy and resolution and practical character.

Of Governor Andrew I do not know as much as you do, though I have formed a favorable judgment of his character and capacity — not a very precise one, however. . . .

They talk of H. here as they do with you, but I am persuaded that the disqualification I have mentioned would breed trouble in the end. The dissatisfaction with Cameron seems to grow more and more vehement every day. His presence taints the reputation of the whole Cabinet, and I think he should be ousted at once. I am sorry to say that a good deal of censure is thrown here upon my good friend Welles, of the Navy Department. He is too deliberate for the temper of our commercial men, who cannot bear to see the pirates of the rebel government capturing our merchant ships one after another and defying the whole United States navy. The Sumter and the Jeff Davis seem to have a charmed existence. Yet it seems to me that new vigor has of late been infused into the Navy Department, and perhaps we underrated the difficulties of rescuing the navy from the wretched state in which that miserable creature Toucey left it. There is a committee of our financial men at present at Washington, who have gone on to confer with the President, and it is possible that they may bring back a better report of the Navy Department than they expected to be able to make.

Rumor is unfavorably busy with Mr. Seward, but as a counterpoise it is confidently said that a mutual aversion has sprung up between him and Cameron. This may be so. The “Times,” I see, does not spare Cameron, nor the “Herald.” There is a good deal of talk here about a reconciliation between Weed and Bennett, and a friendly dinner together, and the attacks which the “Herald” is making upon the War and Navy Department, are said to be the result of an understanding between them. Who knows, or who cares much?

I have emptied into this letter substantially all I have to say. There are doubtless men in private life who would fill the War Department as well as any I have mentioned, but the world knows not their merits, and might receive their names with a feeling of disappointment.

P. S. — With regard to visiting Naushon, I should certainly like it, and like to bring my wife. I have another visit to make, however, in another part of Massachusetts; but I shall keep your kind invitation in mind and will write you again.

W. C. B.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 242-4