Got off dispatches this morning ordering the ironclads south
to strengthen Du Pont in his attack on Charleston, which he intends to take, —
then Savannah, if not too long delayed, when the ironclads must go around to
Pensacola.
Wilkes is not doing as much as we expected. I fear he has
more zeal for and finds it more profitable to capture blockade-runners than to
hunt for the Alabama. Lord Lyons is preferring complaints against him for want
of courtesy, when he is really flinging on him British insults. There is not
much love lost between him and John Bull. If Seward would square up firmly we
could make Bull behave better.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864,
p. 217
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