Diary of John Hay: January 9, 1864

Cameron has written to the President that the entire Union force of the Pa. Legislature, House and Senate, have subscribed a request that the President will allow himself to be re-elected, and that they intend visiting Washington to present it. He says: — “I have kept my promise.”

The indications all look that way. The loud Lincoln men, who are useful only as weather gauges to show the natural drift of things, are laboring hard to prove themselves the original friends of the President. Mark Delahay is talking about the Chase plot to ruin him and Lincoln. He says Pomeroy is to be at the head of the new Frémont party that is soon to be placed in commission; and much of this. On the other hand, Wayne MacVeagh, who dined with me to-day, says that the strugglers now seem to get ahead of each other in the nomination. The New Hampshire occurrence startled the Union League of Philad^a. They saw their thunder stolen from their own arsenals. They fear their own endorsement will be passée before long, and are now casting about to get some arrangement for putting him in nomination at once.

Wayne told a very funny story about Forney and Cameron in conversation about politics on the train. Forney bibulously insisting that if he had beaten Cameron for the Senate, there would have been no war.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 153-4; for the entire diary entry see Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letter of John Hay, p. 152-3.