Diary of John Hay: Monday, December 23, 1863

I took to the Senate to-day the nomination of Schofield as Major General. The President had previously spoken to some of the Senators about it. He is anxious that Schofield should be confirmed so as to arrange this Missouri matter promptly. I told Sherman, Wilson, Harris and Doolittle. Senator Foote also agreed to do all he could to put the matter properly through. But on the nomination being read in Executive Session, Howard of Michigan objected to its consideration and it was postponed. Sherman and Doolittle tell me it will certainly go through when it is regularly taken up.

Lane came up to the President about it, and told him this. Lane is very anxious to have the Kansas part of the plan at once carried out.

Morgan says that Gratz Brown gave to Sumner to present to the Senate the radical protest against Schoflied’s confirmation, and that Sumner presented it to-day. The President sent for Sumner, but he was not at his lodgings.

The President is very much disappointed at Brown. After three interviews with him he understood that Brown would not oppose the confirmation. It is rather a mean dodge to get Sumner to do it in his stead

The President to-night had a dream: — He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said: — “He is a very common-looking man.” The President replied: — “The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them.”

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 141-3; Michael Burlingame, Editor, Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 139-43.

Diary of John Hay: December 10, 1863

. . . . Sumner speaks of the Message with great gratification. It satisfies his idea of proper reconstruction without insisting on the adoption of his peculiar theories. The President repeated, what he has often said before, that there is no essential contest between loyal men on this subject, if they consider it reasonably. The only question is: — Who constitute the State? When that it is decided, the solution of subsequent questions is easy.

He says that he wrote in the Message originally that he considered the discussion as to whether a State has been at any time out of the Union, as vain and profitless. We know that they were — we trust they shall be — in the Union. It does not greatly matter whether, in the meantime, they shall be considered to have been in or out. But he afterwards considered that the 4th Section, 4th Article of the Constitution, empowers him to grant protection to States in the Union, and it will not do ever to admit that these States have at any time been out. So he erased that sentence as possibly suggestive of evil. He preferred, he said, to stand firmly based on the Constitution rather than work in the air.

Talking about the Missouri matter, he said these radical men have in them the stuff which must save the State, and on which we must mainly rely. They are absolutely uncorrosive by the virus of secession. It cannot touch or taint them. While the conservatives, in casting about for votes to carry through their plans, are tempted to affiliate with those whose record is not clear. If one side must be crushed out and the other cherished, there could be no doubt which side we would choose as fuller of hope for the future. We would have to side with the radicals.

“But just there is where their wrong begins. They insist that I shall hold and treat Governor Gamble and his supporters — men appointed by loyal people of Mo. as rep’^s of Mo. loyalty, and who have done their whole duty in the war faithfully and promptly, — who, even when they have disagreed with me, have been silent and kept about the good work, — that I shall treat these men as copperheads and ruinous to the Government. This is simply monstrous.”

“I talked to these people in this way, when they came to me this fall. I saw that their attack on

Gamble was malicious. They moved against him by flank attacks from different sides of the same question. They accused him of enlisting rebel soldiers among the enrolled militia; and of exempting all the rebels, and forcing Union men to do the duty; all this in the blindness of passion. I told them they were endangering the election of Senators; that I thought their duty was to elect Henderson and Gratz Brown;and nothing has happened in our politics which has pleased me more than that incident.”

He spoke of the newborn fury of some of these men, — of Drake stumping against Rollins in '56 on the ground that Rollins was an abolitionist; — of ci-devant rebels coming here in the radical Convention. Not that he objected; he was glad of it; but fair play! let not the pot make injurious reference to the black base of the kettle; he was in favor of short statutes of limitations.

In reply to a remark of Arnold’s about the improved condition of things in Kentucky, and the necessity of still greater improvement, and the good disposition of the Kentucky congressmen, the President said he had for a long time been aware that the Kentuckians were not regarding in good faith the Proclamation of Emancipation and the laws of Congress, but were treating as slaves the escaped freedmen from Alabama and Mississippi; that this must be ended as soon as his hands grew a little less full. . . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 135-8; For the whole diary entry see Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and letters of John Hay, p. 134-7.

B. Gratz Brown . . .

. . . formerly editor of the St. Louis Democrat, it is said will be a straight out emancipation candidate for Congress in St. Louis.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, May 2, 1862, p. 2

Politics in St. Louis. --- B. Gratz Brown vs. Frank Blair

Local politics are assuming an interesting shape. The chief contest will be upon members of the Legislature and members of Congress, and the issue will be emancipation with expatriation. The [Secessionists] remain quiet, and the old Sham Democracy will egg on the different factions of the emancipationists in hopes of slipping a semi-Secessionist into the seat now held by Frank Blair. The late demonstration by Blair in favor of [colonization], as a condition precedent to emancipation, has lost him the entire German vote, while his course against Fremont has done him great injury with another class. Contest will be to commit the Republicans of St. Louis to the Blair doctrine or its opposite. The adverse party is gradually combining in favor of B. Gratz Brown, the old-line free soil Benton Democrat, who wrote Blair into political fame while editor of the Democrat a few years ago. Mr. Brown has written a strong emancipation letter, in which he scouts the idea of [colonization] with force and ability. This letter has made him the representative man against Blair and against the Blair doctrine. The Germans support Brown, and their influence in the Republican party may give him the nomination for Congress. It is currently rumored that a new paper will be started here next month to advocate Mr. Blair’s cause, inasmuch as his old organ, the Democrat, is now arrayed against him. – {Cor. N. Y. Tribune

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 10, 1862, p. 2