Diary of Gideon Welles: October 12, 1865

General Banks has received the nomination for Congress from the Middlesex district, made vacant by the resignation of Gooch, appointed Naval Officer. Stone and Griffin were competitors for the nomination, neither of them known abroad. If I mistake not, Stone has a musty reputation as a politician. While they were struggling, Banks came home from New Orleans and succeeded over both. He will probably be elected, for I see by his speech he classes himself among the Radicals and foreshadows hostility to the Administration.

The Radicals of Massachusetts are preparing to make war upon the President. This is obvious, and Sumner has been inclined to take the lead. But there is no intimacy between Banks and Sumner. They are unlike. Sumner is honest but imperious and impracticable. Banks is precisely the opposite. I shall not be surprised if Banks makes war upon the Navy Department, not that he has manifested any open hostility to myself, but there is deep-seated animosity between him and Admiral Porter and other naval officers of his command who were on the Red River expedition.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 381