Chase, Blair, Bates, and myself were at the Cabinet-meeting.
Seward was absent, but his son was present. So also was Judge Otto, Assistant
Secretary of the Interior. Stanton, though absent, sent no representative. He
condemns the practice of allowing assistants to be present in Cabinet council,
a practice which was introduced by Seward, and says he will never submit or
discuss any important question, when an assistant is present. I think this is
the general feeling and the practice of all.
There was some discussion of affairs at Vicksburg. The
importance of capturing that stronghold and opening the navigation of the river
is appreciated by all, and confidence is expressed in Grant, but it seems that
not enough was doing. The President said Halleck declares he can furnish no
additional troops. As yet I have seen nothing to admire in the military
management of General Halleck, whose mind is heavy and, if employed at all, is
apparently engaged on something else than the public matter in hand. At this
time when the resources of the nation should be called out and activity pervade
all military operations, he sits back in his chair, doing comparatively
nothing. It worries the President, yet he relies upon Halleck and apparently no
one else in the War Department. No one more fully realizes the magnitude of the
occasion, and the vast consequences involved, than the President; he wishes all
to be done that can be done, but yet in army operations will not move or do
except by the consent of the dull, stolid, inefficient, and incompetent
General-in-Chief.
Stanton does not attend one half of the Cabinet-meetings.
When he comes, he communicates little of importance. Not unfrequently he has a
private conference with the President in the corner of the room, or with Seward
in the library. Chase, Blair, and Bates have each expressed their mortification
and chagrin that things were so conducted. To-day, as we came away, Blair
joined me, and said he knew not what we were coming to; that he had tried to
have things different.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 319-20
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