Diary of Gideon Welles: Friday, August 22, 1862

The President tells me he has a list of the number of new recruits which have reached Washington under the late call. Over 18,000 have arrived in just one week. There is wonderful and increasing enthusiasm and determination to put down this Rebellion and sustain the integrity of the Union. It is confined to no class or party or description: rich and poor, the educated and ignorant, the gentle and refined as well as the stout, coarse, and athletic, the Democrats generally as well as the Republicans, are offering themselves to the country.

Governor Dennison and Judge Swayne¹ of Ohio, with others, are urging in person the establishment of a line of armed and armored steamers on the Ohio River. The plan has been elaborated with much care, and has been before presented and pressed with some zeal. Distrust, no doubt, in regard to army management leads these men to seek naval protection. The Blairs are quoted to me as favoring the movement, and Fox has given them encouragement. It has not found favor with me at any time. It is now brought to my attention in such a way that I am compelled to take it up. I find that great names and entire communities in Ohio and Indiana, led on by the authorities of those States, are engaged in it. I told the principal agent, who, with Governor D., had a long interview with me, that my judgment and convictions were against it, for: First: I had no faith that light-draft gunboats would be a safe and reliable means of frontier river-defense. They might be auxiliary and essential aids to the army, but they cannot carry heavy armament, are frail, and in low stages of the water, with high banks which overlook the river, would not be effective and could hardly take care of themselves, though in certain cases, and especially in high water, they might greatly aid the army. Secondly: As a matter of policy it would be injudicious and positively harmful to establish a frontier line between Ohio and Kentucky, making the river the military boundary, — it would be conceding too much. If a line of boats could assist in protecting the northern banks of the Ohio they could afford little security to the southern banks, where, as in Ohio, there is, except in localities, a majority for the Union. I added that I should be opposed to any plan which proposed to establish frontier lines, therein differing from some of our best army officers; that I thought neither Ohio nor Indiana could, on deliberate consideration, wish the line of separation from hostile forces should be the northern boundary of Kentucky. It appeared to me the true course was to make their interest in this war identical with that of Kentucky, and if there were to be a line of demarcation it should be as far south as the southern boundary of Tennessee, and not the banks of the Ohio. The gentlemen seemed to be impressed with these general views.

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¹ Noah H. Swayne, of the United States Supreme Court.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 87-9