Saturday, May 1, 2021

Diary of Gideon Welles: Friday, October 7, 1864

The President was not at his house to-day. Mr. Bates had said to me that the President told him there was no special business. Nevertheless, I preferred soon after twelve to walk over, having some little business of my own. Fessenden, Usher, and myself arrived about the same moment, and we had half an hour's friendly talk. In the course of it, Fessenden took an occasion to pass an opinion upon certain naval officers, showing the prejudiced partisan rather than the enlightened minister and statesman. Farragut, he said, was the only naval officer who has exhibited any skill and ability; there were undoubtedly other officers, but they had not been brought out. I inquired what he thought of Foote. “Well, I allude more particularly to the living,” said he, “but what is Lee, that you have kept him in? Is there any reason except his relationship to the Blairs and to Fox?" — he knew of no other reason. I inquired when Lee had been remiss, and asked him if he knew that Montgomery Blair and Lee were not on speaking terms and had not been for years. He seemed surprised and said he was not. I told him such was the case; that he had never expressed a wish in Lee's behalf to me, or manifested any gratification at that selection, but on the contrary, I knew Blair had thought, with him, that it was an appointment not judicious. I did not tell F. of the narrow animosity of Lee towards Fox. But all this spleen came, I knew, from the War Department and certain influences connected with it. Dahlgren he also denounced, yet when I inquired if he had ever investigated the subject, if he was aware that Dahlgren had maintained an efficient blockade, while Du Pont, whom he half complimented, had not [sic]. “Then,” said I, “what do you say of Porter?” He admitted that he had thought pretty well of Porter until he begun to gather in cotton, and run a race with Banks to get it instead of doing his duty. I told him this was ungenerous and, I apprehended, a sad mistake on his part. The whole tenor of the conversation left no doubt on my mind that Stanton, Winter Davis, Wade, Chase, the thieving Treasury agents and speculators had imposed on Fessenden.

. . . Fessenden is, in some personal matters, very much of a partisan, and his partisan feelings have made him the victim of a very cunning intrigue. He dislikes Seward, and yet is, through other instrumentalities, the creature to some extent of Seward.

Stanton, having been brought into the Cabinet by Seward, started out as a radical. Chase and others were deceived by his pretensions at the beginning, but some time before leaving the Cabinet, Chase found a part of his mistake. Fessenden and others have not yet. They suppose Stanton is with them; Seward knows better. I have no doubt but Stanton when with Fessenden, Wade, and others acquiesces and participates in their expressed views against Seward. Hating Blair, it has grieved Stanton that Lee, the brother-in-law of Blair, should have command, and Fessenden has been impressed accordingly. Himself inclined to radicalism on the slavery issue, though in other respects conservative, Fessenden, who is in full accord with Chase, has a dislike to Blair, an old Democrat but who is represented as the friend of Seward. Yet Blair has no more confidence in, or regard for, Seward than Fessenden has, and I have been surprised that he should acquiesce in the erroneous impression that is abroad. It is easy to perceive why Seward should favor the impression alluded to. Blair was ready to accept the denunciatory resolution of the Baltimore convention as aimed at him, whereas it was intended more particularly for Seward. The Missouri radicals are some who were deceived by the impression that Seward and Blair were a unit. In the convention there was a determination to get rid of Mr. Seward, but the managers, under the contrivance of Raymond, who has shrewdness, so shaped the resolution as to leave it pointless, or as not more direct against Seward than against Blair, or by others against Chase and Stanton.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 172-4

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