Diary of Gideon Welles, Thursday, July 19, 1866

The Democrats have had a large meeting at Reading in Pennsylvania. Mr. Blair is reported to have made an ultra speech, denouncing the intrigues and schemes of the Radical leaders and predicting civil war if they are not defeated at the fall elections. The country has had too recent and too exhausting an experience for another war.

A telegram from the coarse, vulgar creature who is Governor of Tennessee says that there is a quorum of the legislature and that they have ratified the Constitutional Amendment. This legislature was chosen when war existed, and under circumstances and animosities which would not be justified or excusable in peace. It is, of course, no exponent of popular sentiment in that State. But under the urgent appeals of the Radical Members of Congress, Brownlow, the Governor, convened a special session of this dead body on the 4th of July, to ratify the changes in the Constitution of the United States. But he was unable to get a quorum together. Fifty-six were necessary for a quorum; only fifty-four would be assembled, and two were arrested and brought to Nashville as prisoners. These made the requisite fifty-six, and forty-three of these bogus members voted for the Constitutional changes. This is an exhibition of Radical regard for honest principle, for popular opinion, and for changes in the organic law. The change is to be imposed upon the people by fraud, not adopted of choice.

I asked by way of suggestion to the President, how it happened that General Thomas's telegram of the 14th respecting the arrest of members of the legislature was not responded to until the 17th. He said he could not tell, and, evidently apprehending my object, said perhaps General Grant did not get it until the 15th and passed it over to the War Department possibly the next day, and the Secretary of War brought it here on the 17th. "Yet it does seem to have been some time on the way for a telegram," said he. "In the mean time," continued I, "two members of the legislature appear to have been arrested and brought to Nashville." This is Stantonian. Why does the President submit to be victimized?

The irregular tidings that Tennessee had in any way, however illegal or by force and fraud, confirmed the Amendment, as it is called, caused great exultation in Congress. The Radicals felt as if they were relieved, or those of them who felt uneasy under the dictation of Stevens, Boutwell, Schenck, etc. Conscious of their wrongdoing and that they were trifling with the country for mere party ascendancy and power, they broke away from Stevens and refused to follow him. Tennessee can now be permitted to have Representatives, — a right from which she has been excluded.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 556-8