Diary of Gideon Welles: Tuesday, December 20, 1864

Only three of us at the Cabinet meeting. Speed is attending the Court. The others absent, as usual, without cause, and the course pursued sustains them in this neglect. Seward is at the President's every day when there is no Cabinet-meeting and at a different hour on Cabinet days. As Stanton does not go to the President, the President goes to Stanton. Not unfrequently he hurries at the close to go to the War Department. Fessenden frets because there are no Cabinet consultations and yet stays away himself.

Old Tom Ewing of Ohio was hanging around the door of the Executive Mansion as I went in. I stopped for a moment to exchange civilities. Usher, who followed me, informed the President that the old man was waiting for an interview and thought of leaving, but U. advised him to remain now that he had got there. The President expressed his regret at Usher's advice and, turning to me, said, “You know his object?” I said it was probably Wilkes' case. The President said it was, and, notwithstanding Wilkes had abused both him and me, he was inclined to remit his sentence, looking inquiringly at me as he spoke. I told him that I should not advise it; that at the proper time and in the proper way something might be done, perhaps, without injury, though Wilkes had no claim, and this hiring old Mr. Ewing, who is selling his personal influence, is all bad. Usher took strong and emphatic ground against any favor to Wilkes, who is heartless and insubordinate.

It is a misfortune that the President gives his ear to a class of old party hacks like Ewing and Tom Corwin, men of ability and power in their day, for whom he has high regard but who are paid to come here and persuade the President to do wrong. Ewing would not, of himself, do or advise another to do what he beseeches of the President, except for money. All this the President has the sagacity to see, but hardly the will to resist. I shall not be surprised if he yields, as he intimated he was ready to do before any remark from me.

The Senate and House to-day passed an act in conformity with my recommendation, indorsed by the President, creating the office of Vice-Admiral, to correspond with the army grade of Lieutenant-General.

Mr. Usher relates a conversation he had with General Heintzelman at Steubenville in regard to General McClellan, in which General H. says he has been reading and reviewing the events and incidents of the Peninsular Campaign, and he is fully convinced that McClellan intended to betray the army. General H. tells how he was left and the guard at a bridge over which it was necessary he should pass was withdrawn, without notice to him, although he had sent three times to McClellan for instructions and received none. Other singular and unaccounted-for facts are mentioned.

I have heard these intimations from others who had similar suspicions and convictions, but I have never yet been willing to believe he was a traitor, though men of standing call him such. His conduct was strange and difficult to be reconciled with an intelligent and patriotic discharge of the duties of his position. I long ago, and early indeed, was satisfied his heart was not earnest in the cause. He wanted to be victorious in any conflict as he would in a game of chess. Massachusetts and South Carolina were equally at fault in his estimation, and he so declared to me at Cumberland on the Pamunkey in May, 1862.¹ The disasters before Richmond followed soon after, and these were succeeded by his inexcusable conduct and that of his subordinate generals in failing to reinforce and sustain Pope and our army at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

But while I have never had time to review the acts of that period, I still incline to the opinion that his conduct was the result of cool and selfish indifference rather than of treachery and positive guilt. General Heintzelman and others are not only prejudiced against him but positively inimical.

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¹ See vol. i, p. 107.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 203-4