Senator Harlan thinks that Bennett’s support is so important,
especially considered as to its bearing on the soldier vote, that it would pay
to offer him a foreign mission for it, and so told me. Forney has also had a
man talking to the cannie Scot who asked plumply, “Will I be a welcome visitor
at the White House if I support Mr. Lincoln?” What a horrible question for a
man to be able to ask! So thinks the President apparently. It is probable that
Bennett will stay about as he is, thoroughly neutral, balancing carefully until
the October elections, and will then declare for the side which he thinks will
win. It is better in many respects to let him alone.
SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of
John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 221; Michael Burlingame
& John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside
Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 229-30
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