Made complimentary call with my family on the President at 11 A.M. By special request I went some fifteen minutes before the time specified, but there were sixty or eighty carriages in advance of us. The persons who got up the programme were evidently wholly unfit for the business. Instead of giving the first half-hour to the Cabinet and the several legations, and then to Army and Navy officers, Members of Congress, etc., in succession, numbers, including Members of Congress, and they embrace everybody, all the members of their respective boarding-houses, all their acquaintances, immediate and remote, who were in Washington, were there at an early hour. Consequently there was neither order nor system. After a delay of about twenty minutes we were landed in the Executive Mansion, which was already filled to overflowing in the hall and anterooms. While moving in the crowd, near the entrance to the Red Room, some of the officials signed to us and threw open the door to the Blue Room, or reception-room, which we entered, much relieved; but on turning, we found the President and his family immediately behind us. The affair passed off very well. A great want of order and system prevails on these occasions, owing to the ignorance and want of order of the marshal. No one having any conception of discipline or forethought directs or counsels those in charge. We left in a very short time, and the company began to flock in upon us at our house before twelve, and until past four a pretty steady stream came and went, naval and army officers, foreign ministers, Senators and Representatives, bureau officers and clerks, civilians and strangers. Pleasant but fatiguing, and the day was murky and the roads intolerable.
Mr. Seward left on Saturday. The rest of the members received, as did many other officials.
Henry Winter Davis, a conspicuous Member of the last Congress and a Maryland politician of notoriety, died on Saturday. He was eloquent, possessed genius, had acquirements, was eccentric, ambitious, unreliable, and greatly given to intrigue. In politics he was a centralist, regardless of constitutional limitations. I do not consider his death a great public loss. He was restless and active, but not useful. Still there will be a class of extreme Radicals who will deplore his death as a calamity and eulogize his memory.
When at the Executive Mansion the memory of the late President crowded upon my mind. He would have enjoyed the day, which was so much in contrast with all those he had experienced during his presidency.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 408-9
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