Sumner called on me
with young Bright. We had quite a talk on the policy of the Government, and his
own views. Sumner's vanity and egotism are great. He assumes that the
Administration is wholly wrong, and that he is beyond peradventure right; that
Congress has plenary powers, the Executive none, on reestablishing the Union.
He denounced the policy of the President on the question of organizing the
Rebel States as the greatest and most criminal error ever committed by any
government. Dwelt on what constitutes a republican government; says he has read
everything on the subject from Plato to the last French pamphlet. Tells me that
a general officer from Georgia had informed him within a week that the negroes
of that State were better qualified to establish and maintain a republican
government than the whites. He says that Seward, McCulloch, and myself are the
men who have involved the President in this transcendent error, I, a New
England man, New England's representative in the Cabinet, have misrepresented
New England sentiment. McCulloch was imbued with the pernicious folly of Indiana,
but Seward and myself were foully, fatally culpable in giving our countenance
and support to the President in his policy.
I insisted it was
correct, that the country aside from heated politics approved it, and asked if
he supposed there was any opposition to that policy in the Cabinet. He said he
knew Stanton was opposed to it, and when I said I was not aware of it, he
seemed surprised. He asked if I had read his Worcester speech. I told him I had
but did not indorse it. He replied, "Stanton does." "Stanton,"
said he, "came to Boston at that time; the speech was thrown into the
cars, and he had read it before I met him. Stanton complimented the speech. I
said it was pretty radical or had pretty strong views. Stanton said it was none
too strong, that he approved of every sentiment, every opinion and word of
it."
I told Sumner I did
not understand Stanton as occupying that position, and I apprehended the
President did not so understand him. I told him that I well recollected that on
one occasion last spring, when I was in the War Department, he and Dawes and
Gooch came in there. He said, "Yes, and Colfax was there." "I
recollect he was. Stanton took out his project for organizing a government in
North Carolina. I had heard it read on the last day of Mr. Lincoln's life, and
had made a suggestion respecting it, and the project had been modified. Some
discussion took place at the War Department on the question of negro suffrage.
Stanton said he wanted to avoid that topic. You [Sumner] wanted to meet it.
When that discussion opened I left, for I knew I could not agree with
you."
Sumner said he well
recollected that meeting; that he and Colfax had proposed modifications of the
plan and put it in an acceptable shape, but that we had upset it. One other
member of the Cabinet had written him a few days before he left home expressing
sympathy with him, and one other had spoken equally cordially to him since he
arrived here. "You may have had a letter from Speed," I remarked.
"No," said he, "but Speed has had a conversation with me."
I think Harlan must
be the man, yet my impressions were that Harlan held a different position.
Perhaps Iowa has influenced him. Our conversation, though earnest, was not in
anger or with any acrimony. He is confident that he shall carry Stevens's
resolution through the Senate, and be able to defeat the President in his
policy.
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