Diary of Gideon Welles: Saturday, September 27, 1862

Governor Tod¹ called on me to-day. Is hopeful and earnest. Thinks delay is necessary. His confidence in McClellan is unimpaired, and in the President it is greatly increased. Has full, unwavering confidence the country will be extricated and the Union maintained. The Republican State Convention of New York, which met at Syracuse, has nominated General James S. Wadsworth for Governor. There has been a good deal of peculiar New York management in this proceeding, and some disappointments. Morgan, who is, on the whole, a good Governor, though of loose notions in politics, would, I think, have been willing to have received a third nomination, but each of the rival factions of the Union party had other favorites. The Weed and Seward class wanted General Dix to be the conservative candidate, — not that they have any attachment for him or his views, but they have old party hate of Wadsworth. The positive Republican element selected Wadsworth. It is an earnest and fit selection of an earnest and sincere man. In bygone years both Wadsworth and Dix belonged to the school of Silas Wright Democrats. It would have been better had they (Seward and Weed) taken no active part. I am inclined to believe Weed so thought and would so have acted. He proposed going to Europe, chiefly, I understand, to avoid the struggle, but it is whispered that Seward had a purpose to accomplish, — that, finding certain currents and influences are opposed to him and his management of the State Department, he would be glad to retreat to the Senate. Seymour, the Democratic candidate, has smartness, but not firm, rigid principles. He is an inveterate partisan, place-hunter, fond of office and not always choice of means in obtaining it. More of a party man than patriot. Is of the Marcy school rather than of the Silas Wright school, — a distinction well understood in New York.

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¹ David Tod, Governor of Ohio.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 153-4