Showing posts with label Union Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Union Party. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Diary of Gideon Welles: October 11, 1865

The elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa come in favorable, though the vote and the majorities are reduced from the Presidential election. I am glad that the Union party has done well in Philadelphia, for if we had lost the city or given a small vote, there would have been a claim that it was in consequence of my circulars. As it is, I get no credit, but I escape censure for doing right.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 381

Sunday, March 5, 2023

Diary of Gideon Welles: Saturday, August 19, 1865

I have a letter from Eames, who is at Long Branch, ill, and has been there for three weeks. He informs me that Senator Sumner wrote Mrs. E., with whom he corresponds, wishing that she and her husband would influence me to induce the President to change his policy. This letter Eames found on his arrival at Long Branch, and wrote Sumner he could not change me.

Sumner bewails the unanimity of the Cabinet; says there is unexampled unanimity in New England against the policy of the Administration; thinks I ought to resign; says Wade and Fessenden are intending to make vigorous opposition against it, etc., etc.

The proceedings of the political conventions in Maine and Pennsylvania leave no doubt in my mind that extensive operations are on foot for an organization hostile to the Administration in the Republican or Union party. The proceedings alluded to indicate the shape and character of this movement. It is the old radical anti-Lincoln movement of Wade and Winter Davis, with recruits.

That Stanton has a full understanding with these men styling themselves Radicals, I have no doubt. It is understood that the Cabinet unanimously support the policy of the President. No opposition has manifested itself that I am aware. At the beginning, Stanton declared himself in favor of negro suffrage, or rather in favor of allowing, by Federal authority, the negroes to vote in reorganizing the Rebel States. This was a reversal of his opinion of 1863 under Mr. Lincoln. I have no recollection of any disavowal of the position he took last spring, although he has acquiesced in the President's policy apparently, has certainly submitted to it without objection or remonstrance. The Radicals in the Pennsylvanian convention have passed a special resolution indorsing Mr. Stanton by name, but no other member of the Cabinet. Were there no understanding on a point made so prominent by the Radicals, such a resolution would scarcely have been adopted or drafted. Convention resolutions, especially in Pennsylvania, I count of little importance. A few intriguing managers usually prepare them, they are passed under the strain of party excitement, and the very men who voted for them will very likely go against them in two weeks. At this time, however, unusual activity has been made by Forney, Kelley, and others, and the resolution has particular significance.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 363-4

Friday, February 24, 2017

Diary of John Hay: November 1, 1863

This evening Gen'l Schenck ,accompanied by Gen'l Garfield and Judge Kelley , came in to insist upon some order which would prevent disloyal people from voting at the ensuing Maryland election. Before going into the President's room (Kelley and Garfield sitting with me in the ante-room) Kelley spoke very bitterly of Blair’s working against the Union party in Maryland.

After they were gone I handed the President Blair’s Rockville speech, telling him I had read it carefully, and saving a few intemperate and unwise expressions against leading Republicans which might better have been omitted, I saw nothing in the speech which would have given rise to such violent criticism.

“Really,” says the President, “the controversy between the two sets of men represented by him and by Mr. Sumner is one of mere form and little else. I do not think Mr. Blair would agree that the States in rebellion are to be permitted to come at once into the political family and renew the very performances which have already so bedeviled us. I do not think Mr. Sumner would insist that when the loyal people of a State obtain the supremacy in their councils and are ready to assume the direction of their own affairs, that they should be excluded. I do not understand Mr. Blair to admit that Jefferson Davis may take his seat in Congress again as a representative of his people; I do not understand Mr. Sumner to assert that John Minor Botts may not. So far as I understand Mr. Sumner he seems in favor of Congress taking from the Executive the power it at present exercises over insurrectionary districts, and assuming it to itself. But when the vital question arises as to the right and privilege of the people of these States to govern themselves, I apprehend there will be little difference among loyal men. The question at once is presented, in whom this power is vested; and the practical matter for decision is how to keep the rebellious populations from overwhelming and outvoting the loyal minority.”

I asked him if Blair was really opposed to our Union ticket in Maryland. He said he did not know anything about it — had never asked. . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 115-7; For the whole diary entry see Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and letters of John Hay, p. 112-3.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, August 28, 1864

North Shore, 28th August, '64.

Frank wrote me, or printed rather, in large and remarkable capitals, a letter the other day. I enlivened the tranquil circle here by calling it a Capital letter, — a little work of mine which I dedicate to Jane. Probably you are not aware that I am myself the latest little work of Madison University. Blushes forbid me to write that that discriminating institution has done for the least of your friends what Harvard did for that other celebrated scholar, Andrew Jackson. Yesterday I received a letter with a very large green seal, addressed “G. W. C, LL. D.!” Oh my prophetic soul! I have long called Frank and Zib Doctor.

I say not a word about the war, but did people ever deserve success at the polls less than the Union party? Two years ago I was the only Lincoln man I knew hereabouts, and I have come round to the same position. Yet he will be elected, or we are dreary humbugs.

Good-by, dear boy. I am more cheerful than ever, for within two months we shall see the whole force of treason North and South, and if we sink 't is to see what we shall see! I shall not be able to write on Peace — luckily for you. It will be a good text for J. R. L. Give him my love, if he is with you, and to all the dear ones.

Your friend the doctor sends his benediction.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 181-2

Sunday, February 8, 2015

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, October 15, 1863

15th October, 1863.

Whatever is happening to Meade, let us rejoice over Pennsylvannia and Ohio. It is the great vindication of the President, and the popular verdict upon the policy of the war. It gives one greater joy than any event which has lately happened. Is it not the sign of the final disintegration of that rotten mass known as the Democratic party? In this State we have sloughed off the name Republican and are known as the Union party. How glad I am that we can gladly bear that name, and that the Union at last means what it was intended by the wisest and the best of our fathers to mean!

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 166-7