Had a letter from Commodore Wilkes Monday evening,
complaining that injustice was done him in my Annual Report. The letter was
studiously impudent and characteristic, was untruthful in some respects, and
unofficerlike generally. He requested it should be sent to Congress with his
correspondence. I replied that such proceeding would be improper, and that it
would not, of course, be complied with.
I understand that before my reply left the Department he had
furnished copies of his letter to me to the newspapers, which he knows is in
violation of regulations as well as of decorum. He had, I see, prepared his
letter with great care, while my reply was offhand and hasty. I find his letter
in the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer. This discourtesy
and repeated violation of regulations will necessitate a court martial with a
troublesome man of a good deal of ability, of great leisure, and who is not
delicate as regards means. Naval officers of experience have warned me that
orders and favors to Wilkes would result in this, — that he is regardless of
orders to himself, but tyrannical and exacting to others.
A charge of bribery against a Senator has resulted in John
P. Hale's admission that he is the man referred to, acknowledging that he took
the money, but that it was a fee not as a bribe. “Strange such a
difference there should be twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.” This
loud-mouthed paragon, whose boisterous professions of purity, and whose immense
indignation against a corrupt world were so great that he delighted to
misrepresent and belie them in order that his virtuous light might shine
distinctly, is beginning to be exposed and rightly understood. But the whole is
not told and never will be; he is a mass of corruption.
The steamer Chesapeake, seized by Rebel pirate mutineers,
has been captured at Sambro, some twenty miles from Halifax. I was informed by
telegram last night. Immediately sent word that she must be delivered over to
the Colonial authorities, she having been captured in British waters. This
order was sent within ten minutes after the telegram was received, the
messenger who brought it waiting for the reply.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 489-90
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