Was last night at a
loud-heralded and large party given by Marquis Montholon, the French Minister.
Am inclined to believe there was something political as well as social in the
demonstration. No similar party has been given by the French Minister for five
years.
The Naval
Appropriation Bill has been before the House this week, when demagogues of
small pattern exhibited their eminent incapacity and unfitness for legislation.
It is a misfortune that such persons as Washburne and Ingersoll of Illinois and
others are intrusted with important duties. Important and essential appropriations
for the navy yards at Norfolk and Pensacola were stricken out, because they are
in the South; in Boston because it is a wealthy community. Without knowledge,
general or specific, the petty demagogues manifest their regard for the public
interest and their economical views, by making no appropriations, or as few as
possible for the Navy, regardless of what is essential. "We have now Navy
enough to thrash England and France," said one of these small
Representatives in his ignorance; therefore [they] vote no more money for navy
yards, especially none in the Southern States.
Sumner made me his
usual weekly visit this P.M. He is as earnest and confident as ever, probably
not without reason. Says they are solidifying in Congress and will set aside
the President's policy. I inquired if he really thought Massachusetts could
govern Georgia better than Georgia could govern herself, for that was the
kernel of the question: Can the people govern themselves? He could not
otherwise than say Massachusetts could do better for them than they had done
for themselves. When I said every State and people must form its own laws and
government; that the whole social, industrial, political, and civil structure
was to be reconstructed in the Slave States; that the elements there must work
out their own condition, and that Massachusetts could not do this for them, he
did not controvert farther than to say we can instruct them and ought to do it,
that he had letters showing a dreadful state of things South, that the colored
people were suffering beyond anything they had ever endured in the days of
slavery. I told him I had little doubt of it; I had expected this as the first
result of emancipation. Both whites and blacks in the Slave States were to pass
through a terrible ordeal, and it was a most grievous and melancholy thing to
me to witness the spirit manifested towards the whites of the South who were
thus afflicted. Left to themselves, they have great suffering and hardship,
without having their troubles increased by any oppressive acts from abroad.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 430-1
