I find it difficult to hurry Wilkes off with his command.
The public, especially the commercial community, are impatient; but Wilkes,
like many officers, having got position, likes to exhibit himself and snuff
incense. He assumed great credit for promptness, and has sometimes shown it,
but not on this occasion. Has been fussing about his vessel until I had,
to-day, to give him a pretty peremptory order.
Men in New York, men who are sensible in most things, are
the most easily terrified and panic-stricken of any community. They are just
now alarmed lest an ironclad steamer may rush in upon them some fine morning
while they are asleep and destroy their city. In their imagination, under the
teachings of mischievous persons and papers, they suppose every Rebel cruiser
is ironclad, while in fact the Rebels have not one ironclad afloat. It only
requires a sensation paragraph in the Times to create alarm. The Times
is controlled by Seward through Thurlow Weed, and used through him by
Stanton. Whenever the army is in trouble and public opinion sets against its
management, the Times immediately sets up a howl against the Navy.
Senator Pomeroy of Kansas called yesterday in relation to a
scheme, or job, for deporting slaves and colored people to Chiriqui. I
cautioned him against committing himself or the Government to Thompson, or any
corporation or association. Let him know my opinion of Thompson's project and
my opposition to it. Advised him, if anything was seriously and earnestly
designed, to go to the Government of New Granada or any of the Spanish-American
States and treat with them direct, and not through scheming jobbers. Should
suspect P. to have a personal interest in the matter but for the fact that the
President, the Blairs, and one or two men of integrity and character favor it.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864,
p. 122-3
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