Gave the President the case of Stiners, court-martialed and condemned for fraud as a contractor, — similar in principle to the case of the Smiths in Boston.
Some conversation with him yesterday and to-day in regard to his speech Tuesday night and the general question of reëstablishing the authority of the government in the Rebel States and movements at Richmond.
The President asked me what views I took of Weitzel's calling the Virginia legislature together. Said Stanton and others were dissatisfied. Told him I doubted the policy of convening a Rebel legislature. It was a recognition of them, and, once convened, they would, with their hostile feelings, be inclined, perhaps, to conspire against us. He said he had no fear of that. They were too badly beaten, too much exhausted. His idea was, that the members of the legislature, comprising the prominent and influential men of their respective counties, had better come together and undo their own work. He felt assured they would do this, and the movement he believed a good one. Civil government must be reëstablished, he said, as soon as possible; there must be courts, and law, and order, or society would be broken up, the disbanded armies would turn into robber bands and guerrillas, which we must strive to prevent. These were the reasons why he wished prominent Virginians who had the confidence of the people to come together and turn themselves and their neighbors into good Union men. But as we all had taken a different view, he had perhaps made a mistake, and was ready to correct it if he had.
I remarked, in the course of conversation, that if the so-called legislature came together, they would be likely to propose terms which might seem reasonable, but which we could not accept; that I had not great faith in negotiating with large bodies of men, — each would encourage the other in asking and doing what no one of them would do alone; that he could make a better arrangement with any one the worst of them — than with all; that he might be embarrassed by recognizing and treating with them, when we were now in a condition to prescribe what should be done.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 279-80
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