The opinion in regard to General Banks is very unanimous.
None speak favorably of him as a military man, and his civil administration is
much censured. Whether the President will continue to sustain him is to be
seen.
General Frank Blair has resigned his seat in the House, and
the President has revoked the acceptance of his military resignation. This is a
stretch of power and construction that I do not like. Much censure will fall on
the President for this act, and it will have additional edge from the violent
and injudicious speech of General Blair denouncing in unmeasured terms Mr.
Chase. He also assails the appointees of Chase, and his general policy touching
agent's permits in the valley of the Mississippi as vicious and corrupt. I have
an unfavorable opinion of the Treasury management there and on the coast, and
there are some things in the conduct of Chase himself that I disapprove.
The Blairs are pugnacious, but their general views,
especially those of Montgomery Blair, have seemed to me sound and judicious in
the main. A forged requisition of General Blair has been much used against him.
A committee of Congress has pronounced the document a forgery, having been
altered so as to cover instead of $150 worth of stores some $8000 or $10,000.
He charges the wrong on the Treasury agents, and Chase’s friends, who certainly
have actively used it. Whether Chase has given encouragement to the scandal is
much to be doubted. I do not believe he would be implicated in it, though he
has probably not discouraged, or discountenanced it. Chase is deficient in
magnanimity and generosity. The Blairs have both, but they have strong
resentments. Warfare with them is open, bold, and unsparing. With Chase it is
silent, persistent, but regulated with discretion. Blairs make no false
professions. Chase avows no enmities.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 —
December 31, 1866, p. 19-20
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