There is a rumor that Fitz John Porter, whose trial of over
forty days has interested the public, is found guilty and has been cashiered. A
different result was reported at the close of the trial a fortnight since. It
was then said he was unanimously acquitted. I did not give implicit credit to
that rumor, though I read none of the testimony; but my impressions and
observation and all that I heard at the War Department in relation to Porter
and other generals in the day and time of their occurrence for which he was
arraigned were such I could not believe him wholly guiltless. The finding and
punishment are severe, but I apprehend not entirely undeserved. I do not,
however, impute to him disloyalty or treachery, but he was one of a mortified
clique or combination who were vexed and dissatisfied, not without cause perhaps,
that an inferior officer for whom they had not high regard should have been
brought from a distant department and placed over them, their plans and
operations broken up, and the commander whom they respected and to whom they
were attached superseded and virtually disgraced. But if the country was made
to suffer by this mortified partisan combination, it was a crime which should
not go unrebuked or unpunished. Porter may not have been the chief or only
sinner, though the victim in this combination.
It was not a wise or judicious movement to place Pope at the
head of the army last summer. If I am not mistaken those who participated in it
now think so. An intrigue against McClellan brought him and Halleck here.
Perhaps under no circumstances was Pope equal to the command given him, but I
thought then and still believe he was not faithfully and fairly sustained by
Porter and his associates. McClellan and most of his generals were vexed and
irritated. They had some cause for dissatisfaction, but not to the injury of
the country. Fitz John Porter, the intimate of McClellan, entered with all the
ardor of a partisan and a clansman into the feelings and wrongs of his
commander. He and the set to which he belonged did not, I thought at the time,
wish Pope to acquire great glory; their zeal for victory was weak when he
commanded, and the battle was lost. To some extent the results at the second
Bull Run fight are attributable to the bad conduct of the generals. It has been
evident the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac were not enthusiastic for Pope,
— that they did not like him. This is true, but who chilled them? Who
encouraged their dislike?
The Weehawken has arrived at Hampton Roads, having rode out
the gale without making a port. No man but John Rodgers would have pushed on
his vessel in that terrific storm. The Nahant, a better vessel, sought the
Breakwater, as did some of our best wooden steamers.
General Burnside was to have made a forward movement, but
the storm prevented. There are rumors that the army is much demoralized, that
the soldiers do not give their confidence to Burnside, doubt his military
capacity, and that some of the generals are cool. There is, I think, some truth
and some exaggeration in all these reports.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 225-6
