Diary of Gideon Welles: Monday, August 11, 1862

A busy day, reading and preparing dispatches. State Department is sensitively apprehensive that our naval officers will not be sufficiently forbearing towards Englishmen. The old error, running back to the commencement of difficulties, when the Rebels were recognized as belligerents, and a blockade was ordered instead of closing the ports. We are not, it is true, in a condition for war with Great Britain just at this time, but England is in scarcely a better condition for a war with us. At all events, continued and degrading submission to aggressive insolence will not promote harmony nor self-respect. It is a gratification to me that our naval officers assert our rights. I have no fears they will trespass on the rights of others. Full dispatches received from Admiral Farragut, who has got his larger vessels down the river to New Orleans. I had been under apprehensions that the Mississippi was getting so low he would experience difficulty.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 79