After
Cabinet-meeting I had an interview and pretty free interchange of opinion with
the President on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and other subjects. I expressed
myself without reserve, as did the President, who acquiesced fully in my views.
This being the case, I conclude he will place upon it his veto. Indeed, he
intimated as much. Desired, he said, to have my ideas because they might add to
his own, etc.
There is an apparent
rupturing among the Radicals, or a portion of them. They wish to make terms.
Will admit the representation from Tennessee if the President will yield. But
the President cannot yield and sacrifice his honest convictions by way of
compromise.
Truman Smith came to
see me yesterday. Says the House wants to get on good terms with the President,
and ought to; that the President is right, but it will be well to let Congress
decide when and how the States shall be represented. Says Deming is a fool,
politically speaking, and that our Representatives, all of them, are weak and
stupid. I have an impression that Truman called at the suggestion of Seward,
and that this matter of conceding to Congress emanates from the Secretary of
State, and from good but mistaken motives.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 433-4
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