No news from the front. President read this noon a dispatch
from Meade, written last night, in which he says if the Rebels do not attack
him to-day, he will attack them. I doubt it. He cannot do much on the offensive
except under orders. As second in command or in any capacity under an intelligent
superior, I think Meade would do well. He will never have another such
opportunity to do the Rebels harm as when he supinely let Lee and his army
cross the Potomac and escape unmolested.
The elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania absorb attention. The
President says he feels nervous. No doubts have troubled me. An electioneering
letter of McClellan in favor of Woodward for Governor of Pennsylvania, written
yesterday, is published. It surprises me that one so cautious and intelligent
as McC. should have been so indiscreet and unwise. The letter can do him no
good, nor can it aid Woodward, who is a party secessionist. It is a great
mistake, and must have been extorted from McClellan by injudicious partisan
friends, under the mistaken idea that his personal influence might control the
election. What errors prevail in regard to personal influence among party men!
A good and wise man can do but little on the day of election, particularly in a
bad cause. He can often aid in a good one by confirming the rightminded who are
timid and may hesitate and doubt. McClellan lost balance when he wrote this
letter.
Preston King spent the evening with me. Young Ulric Dahlgren
called. The gallant fellow lost a leg at Gettysburg and is just recovering, so
that he gets around on crutches. It is the first of his calls, and King was
wonderfully interested in him — affected to tears — and listened to his modest
accounts with the earnestness of a child.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 469-70
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