For two or three
days I have been prostrated by a severe attack of indigestion, yet against the
remonstrance of Dr. H. I went to the President's Saturday evening. What took
place and subsequent reflection while prostrated on my lounge have disquieted
and greatly disturbed me. It is a lost opportunity. The President fails to
comprehend the true condition of affairs and the schemes of prominent men
around him, or hesitates to grapple with them. In either case he is deceived
and fatally wrong. He must, and evidently expects to, rely on the Democrats to
overcome the Radicals who are conspiring against him and the Constitution. But
the Democrats have no confidence in Seward and will not fellowship with him.
Seward knows that, if the President does not. This call for a national Union
convention which has been gotten up is perverted into a Seward call; the party
is to be Seward's party, and it cannot, therefore, be Democratic. The President
is, consequently, purchasing or retaining Seward and his followers at too high
a price, too great a sacrifice. Enough Republicans may rally with this call to
defeat the Radicals, but cannot themselves become a formidable and distinct
power. If, however, the movement defeats the reckless plans of the Radicals, it
will accomplish a great good. I have my doubts if the flimsy expedient will do
much good.
Our President has
been too forbearing, has wasted his strength and opportunities, and without
some thorough changes will find himself, I apprehend, the victim of his own
yielding policy in this regard. I do not see how it is possible to sustain
himself with Seward on his shoulders.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 540-1
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