Incessant employment early and late has prevented me from
making entries, and there has been little of public interest to engage me. On
Monday evening I attended a party at Admiral Shubrick's which could not be
avoided, and was detained later than I intended, but also went at 11 P.M. to
Tassara's, the Spanish Minister. Both were very dull, the latter crowded.
Committees and resolutions of inquiry from Congress have
flocked in upon the Department. Many of the latter were frivolous, and most of
them for mischievous purposes. How little do the outside public know of the
intrigues of Congressional demagogues, who, under the guise of great public
economists, are engaged in speculating schemes and fraudulent contrivances to
benefit themselves, pecuniarily! John P. Hale, who is eminently conspicuous in
this class of professed servants and guardians of the public treasury, has been
whitewashed for his three-thousand-dollar retainer. The committee excuse him,
but propose a law which shall inflict ten thousand dollars' fine and two years'
imprisonment on any one who shall again commit the offense.
Little of particular interest in the Cabinet-meeting. Seward
left early, and Chase soon followed. I to-day wrote the latter, expressing
pretty deliberately and effectually my opinion in regard to permits for cutting
ship-timber in North Carolina. It may give offense, but I could do no less than
in a mild form object to the favoritism and monopoly that the system
engendered.
Blair, who, with Senator Doolittle, was at my house this
evening, avers I am a fortunate man above others. He says my opponents are
making me great, and that I am fortunate in the attacks and abuses that are
bestowed, and repeats an aphorism of Colonel Benton, that "a man is made
great by his enemies, and not by his friends." There is doubtless some
truth in the remark, but not, I apprehend, as regards myself.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 521-2
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