Returned last evening from strictly confidential visit to
New York.
Some discussion in Cabinet-meeting to-day on letters of
marque. Seward and Chase are both strong advocates of the measure. Am surprised
that Chase should favor it, for he must be sensible of the consequences. He
has, I think, committed himself somewhat hastily to some of the indignant but
inconsiderate men in the shipping interest who are sufferers. Seward has no knowledge
on the subject, nor any conception of the effect of letting loose these
depredators under government sanction. There is such a general feeling against
the English, who are conniving with and aiding the Rebels, that privateering is
becoming popular with the Administration and country. Statesmen who should
check and restrain the excited, erring popular current are carried along with
it. I suggested some doubts of the expediency of the proposed proceedings, and
the principles involved. In the first place I queried whether Congress could
depute legislative power to the Executive, as was assumed. I asked Seward if he
had any money to pay the promised bounties, and if he was of opinion there
could be fines and criminal punishment inflicted by Executive regulations
merely. Seward said he had no money; knew not whether there was any
appropriation from which funds could be taken; if not, he must pledge the
Government. This I opposed, and no one sustained Seward or expressed an opinion
on the subject. As regarded penal inflictions, fines, criminal punishment by
regulation he had no doubt whatever, should not hesitate in the least. I could
admit no such power on the part of the Executive. My doubts and suggestions, I
perceived, set others thinking. Chase became silent.
These notions in regard to privateers and letters of marque,
though crude, erroneous, and fraught with evil, have been maturing for some
time, and I do not mistake in placing much of the mischief to the State
Department, which would be irresponsible for Navy transgressions. The Times of
New York and the Chronicle of this city and papers of that particular
phase of partyism, which never [act] without prompting from a certain quarter,
have been writing up the matter and getting the public mind excited. The Chronicle
pronounces the privateers to be a volunteer navy like volunteer forces on
land. The Times mixes up letters of marque with the Navy Department,
which it blames for delaying to issue the necessary authority, innocently
unaware that it is a subject pertaining to that Department of the Government
whose head it would never intentionally injure.
Conflicting accounts concerning Farragut's command on the
lower Mississippi. The Rebel accounts state he passed Port Hudson with his
vessel, the others being driven back, with the exception of the steamer
Mississippi, which all say was grounded and blown up. Our account represents
that all the fleet passed up except the Mississippi.
The accounts from Porter, above Vicksburg, are not
satisfactory. He is fertile in expedients, some of which are costly without
adequate results. His dispatches are full of verbosity of promises, and the
mail which brings them also brings ludicrous letters and caricatures to Heap, a
clerk who is his brother-in-law, filled with laughable and burlesque accounts
of amusing and ridiculous proceedings. These may be excusable as a means of
amusement to keep up his spirits and those of his men, but I should be glad to
witness, or hear of something more substantial and of energies employed in what
is really useful. Porter has capabilities and I am expecting much of him, but
he is by no means an Admiral Foote.
The progress of the squadron and troops at Charleston is
slow and unsatisfactory. I apprehend the defenses are being strengthened much
faster than the assailants. Du Pont has attacked Fort McAllister and satisfied
himself that the turret vessels are strong and capable of great endurance, but
at the same time he doubtless made the Rebels aware of these facts.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 247-9
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