Diary of Edward Bates: April 20, 1859

Today was published in St Louis papers (copied from the New York Tribune) a recent letter of mine to the Whig Committee of New York, in answer to their call upon me for my views and opinions on the politics of the country, and the signs of the times.¹

St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1859.

 

To Messrs. J. PHILIPS PHOENIX, WILLIS BLACKSTONE, H. M. BININGER, DAVID J. LILET AND H. R. SMITH, Committee, New York.

 

Sirs: A short time ago I was favored with your note of the 7th inst., covering a resolution of the Committee, to the effect that it is inexpedient at this time further to discuss or agitate the Negro question, but rather to turn the attention of the people to other topics — "topics of general importance, such as our Foreign Relations, including the Extension of Territory; the building of Railroads for National purposes; the improvement of our Harbors, the navigation of our Rivers to facilitate Internal Commerce; the subject of Currency, and a Tariff of Duties, and other means of developing our own internal resources, our home wealth, and binding together by ties of national and fraternal feelings, the various parts and sections of our widely extended Republic."

 

Your letter, gentlemen, opens a very wide field, in asking for my "opinion upon the subject, and my views as to the signs of the times." Books have been written upon these matters, and speeches delivered by the thousand ; and yet the argument seems as far from being exhausted as it was at the beginning ; and I take it for certain that you do not expect or desire me to discuss at large, all or any of these interminable quarrels. That I have opinions upon all or most of them, is true — not the opinions of this or that party, ready to be abandoned or modified to suit this or that platform, but my own opinions — perhaps the more fixed and harder to be changed because deliberately formed in the retirement of private life, free from the exigencies of official responsibility and from the perturbations of party policy. They are my own opinions, right or wrong.

 

As to the Negro question — I have always thought, and often declared in speech and in print, that it is a pestilent question, the agitation of which has never done good to any party, section or class, and never can do good, unless it be accounted good to stir up the angry passions of men, and exasperate the unreasoning jealousy of sections, and by those bad means foist some unfit men into office, and keep some fit men out. It is a sensitive question into whose dangerous vortex it is quite possible for good men to be drawn unawares. But when I see a man, at the South or the North, of mature age and some experience, persist in urging the question, after the sorrowful experience of the last few years, I can attribute his conduct to no higher motive than personal ambition or sectional prejudice.

 

As to the power of the General Government to protect the persons and properties, and advance the interests of the people, by laying taxes, raising armies and navies, building forts and arsenals, light houses, moles, and breakwaters, surveying the coasts and adjacent seas, improving rivers, lakes, and harbors, and making roads — I should be very sorry to doubt the existence of the power, or the duty to exercise it, whenever the constituted authorities have the means in their hands, and are convinced that its exercise is necessary to protect the country and advance the prosperity of the people.

 

In my own opinion, a government that has no power to protect the harbors of its country against winds and waves and human enemies, nor its rivers against snags, sands and rocks, nor to build roads for the transportation of its armies and its mails and the commerce of its people, is a poor, impotent government, and not at all such a government as our fathers thought they had made when they produced the Constitution which was greeted by intelligent men everywhere with admiration and gratitude as a government free enough for all the ends of legal liberty and strong enough for all the purposes of national and individual protection. A free people, if it be wise, will make a good constitution; but a constitution, however good in itself, did never make a free people. The people do not derive their rights from the government, but the government derives its powers from the people; and those powers are granted for the main, if not the only, purpose of protecting the rights of the people. Protection, then, if not the sole, is the chief end of government.

 

And it is for the governing power to judge, in every instance, what kind and what degree of protection is needful — whether a Navy to guard our commerce all around the world, or an Army to defend the country against armed invasion from without, or domestic insurrection from within; or a Tariff, to protect our home industry against the dangerous obtrusion of foreign labor and capital.

 

Of the existence of the power and duty of the Government to protect the People in their persons, their property, their industry and their locomotion, I have no doubt; but the time, the mode and the measure of protection, being always questions of policy and prudence, must of necessity be left to the wisdom and patriotism of those whose duty it is to make laws for the good government of the country. And with them I freely leave it, as the safest, and indeed the only, constitutional depository of the power.

 

As to our Foreign Policy generally, I have but little to say. I am not much of a progressive, and am content to leave it where Washington [Jefferson] placed it, upon that wise, virtuous, safe maxim — "Peace [. . .] with all nations; entangling alliance[s] with none." The greedy and indiscriminate appetite for foreign acquisition, which makes us covet our neighbor's lands, and devise cunning schemes to get them, has little of my sympathy. I view it as a sort of political gluttony, as dangerous to our body politic as gluttony is to the natural man — producing disease certainly, hastening death, probably. Those of our politicians who are afflicted with this morbid appetite are wont to cite the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, as giving countenance to their inordinate desires. But the cases are wholly unlike in almost every particular. Louisiana was indispensable to our full and safe enjoyment of an immense region which was already owned, and its acquisition gave us the unquestioned control of that noble system of Mississippi waters, which nature seems to have made to be one and indivisible, and rounded off the map of the nation into one uniform and compacted whole. Nothing remained to mar and disfigure our national plat, but Florida, and that was desirable, less for its intrinsic value, than because it would form a dangerous means of annoyance, in case of war with a Maritime Power, surrounded as it is, on three sides by the ocean, and touching three of our present States, with no barrier between. The population of Louisiana and Florida, when acquired, was very small compared with the largeness of the territory; and, lying in contact with the States, was easily and quickly absorbed into and assimilated with the mass of our people. Those countries were acquired, moreover, in the most peaceful and friendly manner, and for a satisfactory consideration.

 

Now, without any right or any necessity, it is hard to tell what we do not claim in all the continent south of us, and the adjacent islands. Cuba is to be the first fruit of our grasping enterprise, and that is to be gotten at all hazards, by peaceful purchase if we can, by war and conquest if we must.² But Cuba is only an outpost to the Empire of Islands and continental countries that are to follow. A leading Senator³ has lately declared (in debate on the Thirty Million bill⁴) that we must not only have Cuba, but all the islands from Cape Florida to the Spanish Main, so as to surround the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and make them our "mare clausum" like the Mediterranean, in old times, when the Roman Emperor ruled both its shores, from the pillars of Hercules to the Hellespont.⁵ This claim of mare nostrum implies, of course, that we must own the continent that bounds our sea on the west, as well as the string of islands that inclose it on the east — that is, Mexico, Central America, and all South America, so far south at least as the Orinoco.⁶ In that wide compass of sea and land there are a good many native governments, and provinces belonging to the strongest maritime powers, and a narrow continental isthmus which we ourselves, as well as England and France, are wont to call the highway of nations. To fulfill the grand conception, and perfect our tropical empire, we must buy or conquer all these torrid countries, and their mongrel populations. As to buying them, it strikes me that we had better waite [sic] awhile, at least until the Government has ceased to borrow money to pay its current expenses. And as to conquering them, perhaps it would be prudent to pause and make some estimate of costs and contingencies, before we rush into war with all maritime Europe and half America.

 

I am not one of those who believe that the United States is not an independent and safe nation, because Cuba is not a part of it. On the contrary, I believe that we are quite capable of self-defense, even if the "Queen of the Antilles" were a province of England, France or Russia; and surely, while it remains an appendage of a comparatively feeble nation, Cuba has much more cause to fear us than we have to fear Cuba. In fact, gentlemen, I cannot help doubting the honesty of the cowardly argument by which we are urged to rob poor old Spain of this last remnant of her Western empire, for fear that she might use it to rob us.

 

But suppose we could get, honestly and peaceably, the whole of the country — continental and insular — from the Rio Grande to the Orinoco, and from Trinidad to Cuba, and thus establish our mare clausum, and shut the gate of the world across the Isthmus, can we govern them wisely and well? For the last few years, in the attempt to govern our home Territories of Kansas and Utah, we have not very well maintained the dignity and justice of the nation, nor secured the peace and prosperity of the subject people.⁷ Can we hope to do better with the various mixed races of Mexico, Central and South America, and the West India Islands? Some of those countries have been trying for fifty years to establish republican governments on our model, but in every instance have miserably failed; and yet, there was no obstacle to complete success but their own inaptitude.

 

For my part, I should be grieved to see my country become, like Rome, a conquering and dominant nation; for I think there are few or no examples in history, of Governments whose chief objects were glory and power, which did ever secure the happiness and prosperity of their own people. Such Governments may grow great and famous, and advance a few of their citizens to wealth and nobility; but the price of their grandeur is the personal independence and individual freedom of their people. Still less am I inclined to see absorbed into our system, "on an equal footing with the original States," the various and mixed races (amounting to I know not how many millions) which inhabit the continent and islands south of our present border. I am not willing to inoculate our body politic with the virus of their diseases, political and social — diseases which, with them, are chronic and hereditary, and with us could hardly fail to produce corruption in the head and weakness in the members.

 

Our own country, as it is, in position, form and size, is a wonder which proclaims a wisdom above the wit of man. Large enough for our posterity, for centuries to come: All in the temperate zone, and therefore capable of a homogeneous population, yet so diversified in climates and soils, as to produce everything that is necessary to the comfort and wealth of a great people: Bounded east and west by great oceans, and bisected in the middle by a mighty river, which drains and fructifies the continent, and binds together the most southern and northern portions of our land by a bond stronger than iron. Beside all this, it is new and growing — the strongest on the continent, with no neighbor whose power it fears, or of whose ambition it has cause to be jealous. Surely such a country is great enough and good enough for all the ends of honest ambition and virtuous power.

It seems to me that an efficient home-loving Government, moderate and economical in its administration, peaceful in its objects, and just to all nations, need have no fear of invasion at home, or serious aggression abroad. The nations of Europe have to stand continually in defense of their existence; but the conquest of our county by a foreign power is simply impossible, and no nation is so absurd as to entertain the thought. We may conquer ourselves by local strifes and sectional animosities; and when, by our folly and wickedness, we have accomplished that great calamity, there will be none to pity us for the consequences of so great a crime.

 

If our Government would devote all its energies to the promotion of peace and friendship with all foreign countries, the advancement of Commerce, the increase of Agriculture, the growth and stability of Manufactures, and the cheapening, quickening and securing the internal trade and travel of our country ; in short, if it would devote itself in earnest to the establishment of a wise and steady policy of internal government, I think we should witness a growth and consolidation of wealth and comfort and power for good, which cannot be reasonably hoped for from a fluctuating policy, always watching for the turns of good fortune, or from a grasping ambition to seize new territories, which are hard to get and harder to govern.

 

The present position of the Administration is a sorrowful commentary upon the broad democracy of its professions. In theory, the people have the right and ability to do anything; in practice, we are verging rapidly to the One-Man power.

The President, the ostensible head of the National Democrats, is eagerly striving to concentrate power in his own hands, and thus to set aside both the People and their Representatives in the actual affairs of government. Having emptied the Treasury, which he found full, and living precariously upon borrowed money, he now demands of Congress to entrust to his unchecked discretion the War power, the Purse and the Sword. First, he asks Congress to authorize him, by statute, to use the Army to take military possession of the Northern Mexico, and hold it under his protectorate, and as a security for debts due to our citizens⁸ — civil possession would not answer, for that might expose him, as in the case of Kansas, to be annoyed by a factious Congress and a rebellious Territorial Legislature.

Secondly: Not content with this, he demands the discretionary power to use the Army and Navy in the South, also in blockading the coast and marching his troops into the interior of Mexico and New Granada, to protect our citizens against all evil-doers along the transit routes of Tehuantepec and Panama.⁹ And he and his supporters in Congress claim this enormous power upon the ground that, in this particular at least, he ought to be the equal of the greatest monarch of Europe. They forget that our fathers limited the power of the President by design, and for the reason that they had found out by sad experience that the monarchs of Europe were too strong for freedom.

 

Third: In strict pursuance of this doctrine, first publicly announced from Ostend,¹⁰ he demands of Congress to hand over to him thirty millions of dollars to be used at his discretion, to facilitate his acquisition of Cuba.¹¹ Facilitate how ? Perhaps it might be imprudent to tell.

 

Add to all this, the fact (as yet unexplained) that one of the largest naval armaments which ever sailed from our coast is now operating in South America, ostensibly against a poor little republic far up the Plate River,¹² to settle some little quarrel between the two Presidents.¹³ If Congress had been polite enough to grant the President's demand of the sword and the purse against Mexico, Central America and Cuba, this navy, its duty done at the south, might be made, on its way home, to arrive in the Gulf very opportunely, to aid the " Commander-in-Chief " in the acquisition of some very valuable territory.

 

I allude to these facts with no malice against Mr. Buchanan, but as evidences of the dangerous change which is now obviously sought to be made in the practical working of the Government — the concentration of power in the hands of the President, and the dangerous policy, now almost established, of looking abroad for temporary glory and aggrandizement, instead of looking at home, for all the purposes of good government — peaceable, moderate, economical, protecting all interests alike, and by a fixed policy, calling into safe exercise all the talents and industry of our people, and thus steadily advancing our country in everything which can make a nation great, happy, and permanent.

 

The rapid increase of the Public Expenditures (and that, too, under the management of statesmen professing to be peculiarly economical) is an alarming sign of corruption and decay.

 

That increase bears no fair proportion to the growth and expansion of the country, but looks rather like wanton waste or criminal negligence. The ordinary objects of great expense are not materially augmented — the Army and Navy remain on a low peace establishment— the military defenses are little, if at all, enlarged — the improvement of Harbors, Lakes and Rivers is abandoned, and the Pacific Railroad is not only not begun but its very location is scrambled for by angry sections, which succeed in nothing but mutual defeat. In short, the money to an enormous amount (I am told at the rate of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year) is gone, and we have little or nothing to show for it. In profound peace with foreign nations, and surrounded with the proofs of National growth and individual prosperity, the Treasury, by less than two years of mismanagement, is made bankrupt, and the Government itself is living from hand to mouth, on bills of credit and borrowed money!

 

This humiliating state of things could hardly happen if men in power were both honest and wise. The Democratic economists in Congress confess that they have recklessly wasted the Public Revenue; they confess it by refusing to raise the Tariff to meet the present exigency, and by insisting that they can replenish the exhausted Treasury and support the Government, in credit and efficiency, by simply striking off their former extravagances.

 

An illustrious predecessor of the President is reported to have declared "that those who live on borrowed money ought to break." I do not concur in that harsh saying; yet I am clearly of opinion that the Government, in common prudence (to say nothing of pride and dignity), ought to reserve its credit for great transactions and unforeseen emergencies. In common times of peace, it ought always to have an established revenue, equal, at least, to its current expenses. And that revenue ought to be so levied as to foster and protect the Industry of the country employed in our most necessary and important manufactures.

 

Gentlemen, I cannot touch upon all the topics alluded to in your letter and resolution. I ought rather to beg your pardon for the prolixity of this answer. I speak for no party, because the only party I ever belonged to has ceased to exist as an organized and militant body.

 

And I speak for no man but myself.

 

I am fully aware that my opinions and views of public policy are of no importance to anybody but me, and there is good reason to fear that some of them are so antiquated and out of fashion as to make it very improbable that they will ever again be put to the test of actual practice.

 

Most respectfully,

EDWARD BATES.

The Republican publishes the letter to gratify the curiosity of my numerous friends throughout the country, but gives no opinion, neither praise nor censure.

The Evening News is rapturous in its applause, and glorifies me without measure or moderation.

The New York City papers eagerly published the letter, with few editorial comments, for the most part with moderate praise — I have seen only the Tribune (Greel[e]y's¹⁴) The Times (Raymond's¹⁵) the Express (Brooks'¹⁶) and the Herald (Bennett's¹⁷)[.]

I expected a sour reception from the Republican papers — Especially the Tribune and Times — on account of my openly opposing the further agitation of the Negro question. The Tribune,¹⁸ tho' well pleased with the rest of the letter, is clearly not well pleased with that part, but makes a distinction in my favor, between the two kinds of opposition to aggitation [sic] — one (with which he charges Hiram Ketchum¹⁹) he characterises as subserviency to the 'Slave power' and a tacit aid to their efforts to propagate and extend slavery. The other (which he supposes may be my position) a desire to stop the slavery aggitation [sic], with a view to more national questions, but with a readiness to resist the efforts of the Southern propagandists in their efforts to spread slavery where we do not find it.

The letter I think, is well written and effective. But some of my friends, I am sure, think me imprudent, in coming out so plainly upon the subjects treated of. I am not so timid, perhaps not so prudent as they — Upon the whole, the letter has been most favorably received in St Louis.

_______________

¹ This present version of the letter is that of the New York Tribune of April 16, 1859.

² This was the substance of the Ostend Manifesto which Buchanan as Minister to Great Britain had joined Ministers John Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in promulgating. As Secretary of State under President Polk, Buchanan had tried to buy Cuba. In his second, third, and fourth annual messages he urged Congress to cooperate with him in securing it by negotiation.

³ Robert Toombs of Georgia: Whig state legislator, 1837-1840, 1841-1844 ; states' rights Democratic congressman, 1845-1853 ; U. S. senator, 1853-1861. He was later a leader in the Georgia Secession Convention, and congressman, brigadier-general, and secretary of State under the Confederacy.

⁴ January, 1859, Senate Reports, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., ser. no. 994, doc. no. 351. The bill purposed to appropriate $30,000,000 "to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiation." Senator Slidell (infra, Nov. 24, 1859, note 89) introduced it on January 10. 1859 (Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 277) ; it was reported favorably by the Committee on Foreign Relations of which he was chairman, on January 24, 1859 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538) ; it was debated at great length on January 24, February 9-10, February 15—17, February 21, and February 25 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538-544, 904-909, 934-940, 960968, 1038, Appendix [155-169], 1058-1063, 1079-1087, 1179-1192, 1326-1363) ; but because of opposition, it was withdrawn on February 26 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 13S51387). At the next session, on December 8, 1859, Senator Slidell reintroduced this bill (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 53), had it referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on December 21 (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 199), reported it out favorably to the Senate on May 30, 1860, but because of opposition did not push it (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 2456). He promised to call it up again at the next session, but when that time arrived was too busy seceding to bother about Cuba.

⁵ On January 24, Toombs had said, "Cuba has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico, and then the Caribbean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of the United States of America . . . that development, that progress throughout the tropics [is] the true, fixed unalterable policy of the nation." Ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 543.

⁶ I. e., as far as Venezuela.

⁷ Bitterness over the slavery question had reached the point of armed conflict, raids, and murder in Kansas in 1855-1856, and Utah was at this time subject to frequent Indian raids. It was in 1859, too, that the Republicans tried to prohibit polygamy in Utah and the Democrats succeeded, probably with slavery in other territories in mind, in preventing Congressional legislation on the subject.

⁸ Dec. 6, 1858, James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, V, 514. See infra, Feb. 15, 1860.

⁹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 516_517.

¹⁰ Supra, April 20, 1859, note 2.

¹¹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 508-511.

¹² Rio de La Plata in South America.

¹³ An expedition of some 19 ships, 200 guns, and 2.500 men which was sent against Paraguay because a vessel of that nation had fired upon the United States steamer Water Witch. A mere show of force sufficed to secure both an apology and an indemnity on February 10, 1859. The President of Argentina was so interested and so pleased that he presented the commander with a sword.

¹⁴ Infra, Feb. 2, 1860, note 47.

¹⁵ Infra, Feb. 4, 1860, note 61.

¹⁶ Infra, Sept. 20, 1860, note 12.

¹⁷ James Gordon Bennett: journalist in Boston, New York, and Charleston; then Washington correspondent; next editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, 1829-1832, and of the Pennsylvanian, 1832-1833 ; and finally editor-owner of the New York Herald, 18351867. He made the Herald one of the most enterprising and spectacular of papers and kept it independent. He had supported Taylor (Whig) in 1848, Pierce (Democrat) in 1852, Fr6mont (Republican) in 1856, and was to support Douglas against Lincoln in 1860 and Lincoln against McClellan in 1864, Johnson against the Radicals in 1865-1866 and the Radicals against Johnson in 1866-1867. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Bennett wished to let the Southern States go in peace, but when war came he supported it.

¹⁸ For editorial comment see the New York Tribune, April 16, 1859.

¹⁹ Chairman of the Whig General Committee of New York City. Bates originally sent his letter to Ketchum in February, but it disappeared and he had to recopy it out of his letter-book and resend it for publication. Ibid., April 16, 1859. Ketchum represented moderate anti-Seward opinion in New York, was a delegate to the National Union Convention in Baltimore, but opposed the formation of a third party. He promised to support Mr. Bates if he were nominated by the Republicans.

SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 1-10

Edward Bates to the Whig Committee of New York, February 24, 1859

St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1859.

To Messrs. J. PHILIPS PHOENIX, WILLIS BLACKSTONE, H. M. BININGER, DAVID J. LILET AND H. R. SMITH, Committee, New York.

Sirs: A short time ago I was favored with your note of the 7th inst., covering a resolution of the Committee, to the effect that it is inexpedient at this time further to discuss or agitate the Negro question, but rather to turn the attention of the people to other topics — "topics of general importance, such as our Foreign Relations, including the Extension of Territory; the building of Railroads for National purposes; the improvement of our Harbors, the navigation of our Rivers to facilitate Internal Commerce; the subject of Currency, and a Tariff of Duties, and other means of developing our own internal resources, our home wealth, and binding together by ties of national and fraternal feelings, the various parts and sections of our widely extended Republic."

Your letter, gentlemen, opens a very wide field, in asking for my "opinion upon the subject, and my views as to the signs of the times." Books have been written upon these matters, and speeches delivered by the thousand ; and yet the argument seems as far from being exhausted as it was at the beginning ; and I take it for certain that you do not expect or desire me to discuss at large, all or any of these interminable quarrels. That I have opinions upon all or most of them, is true — not the opinions of this or that party, ready to be abandoned or modified to suit this or that platform, but my own opinions — perhaps the more fixed and harder to be changed because deliberately formed in the retirement of private life, free from the exigencies of official responsibility and from the perturbations of party policy. They are my own opinions, right or wrong.

As to the Negro question — I have always thought, and often declared in speech and in print, that it is a pestilent question, the agitation of which has never done good to any party, section or class, and never can do good, unless it be accounted good to stir up the angry passions of men, and exasperate the unreasoning jealousy of sections, and by those bad means foist some unfit men into office, and keep some fit men out. It is a sensitive question into whose dangerous vortex it is quite possible for good men to be drawn unawares. But when I see a man, at the South or the North, of mature age and some experience, persist in urging the question, after the sorrowful experience of the last few years, I can attribute his conduct to no higher motive than personal ambition or sectional prejudice.

As to the power of the General Government to protect the persons and properties, and advance the interests of the people, by laying taxes, raising armies and navies, building forts and arsenals, light houses, moles, and breakwaters, surveying the coasts and adjacent seas, improving rivers, lakes, and harbors, and making roads — I should be very sorry to doubt the existence of the power, or the duty to exercise it, whenever the constituted authorities have the means in their hands, and are convinced that its exercise is necessary to protect the country and advance the prosperity of the people.

In my own opinion, a government that has no power to protect the harbors of its country against winds and waves and human enemies, nor its rivers against snags, sands and rocks, nor to build roads for the transportation of its armies and its mails and the commerce of its people, is a poor, impotent government, and not at all such a government as our fathers thought they had made when they produced the Constitution which was greeted by intelligent men everywhere with admiration and gratitude as a government free enough for all the ends of legal liberty and strong enough for all the purposes of national and individual protection. A free people, if it be wise, will make a good constitution; but a constitution, however good in itself, did never make a free people. The people do not derive their rights from the government, but the government derives its powers from the people; and those powers are granted for the main, if not the only, purpose of protecting the rights of the people. Protection, then, if not the sole, is the chief end of government.

And it is for the governing power to judge, in every instance, what kind and what degree of protection is needful — whether a Navy to guard our commerce all around the world, or an Army to defend the country against armed invasion from without, or domestic insurrection from within; or a Tariff, to protect our home industry against the dangerous obtrusion of foreign labor and capital.

Of the existence of the power and duty of the Government to protect the People in their persons, their property, their industry and their locomotion, I have no doubt; but the time, the mode and the measure of protection, being always questions of policy and prudence, must of necessity be left to the wisdom and patriotism of those whose duty it is to make laws for the good government of the country. And with them I freely leave it, as the safest, and indeed the only, constitutional depository of the power.

As to our Foreign Policy generally, I have but little to say. I am not much of a progressive, and am content to leave it where Washington [Jefferson] placed it, upon that wise, virtuous, safe maxim — "Peace [. . .] with all nations; entangling alliance[s] with none." The greedy and indiscriminate appetite for foreign acquisition, which makes us covet our neighbor's lands, and devise cunning schemes to get them, has little of my sympathy. I view it as a sort of political gluttony, as dangerous to our body politic as gluttony is to the natural man — producing disease certainly, hastening death, probably. Those of our politicians who are afflicted with this morbid appetite are wont to cite the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, as giving countenance to their inordinate desires. But the cases are wholly unlike in almost every particular. Louisiana was indispensable to our full and safe enjoyment of an immense region which was already owned, and its acquisition gave us the unquestioned control of that noble system of Mississippi waters, which nature seems to have made to be one and indivisible, and rounded off the map of the nation into one uniform and compacted whole. Nothing remained to mar and disfigure our national plat, but Florida, and that was desirable, less for its intrinsic value, than because it would form a dangerous means of annoyance, in case of war with a Maritime Power, surrounded as it is, on three sides by the ocean, and touching three of our present States, with no barrier between. The population of Louisiana and Florida, when acquired, was very small compared with the largeness of the territory; and, lying in contact with the States, was easily and quickly absorbed into and assimilated with the mass of our people. Those countries were acquired, moreover, in the most peaceful and friendly manner, and for a satisfactory consideration.

Now, without any right or any necessity, it is hard to tell what we do not claim in all the continent south of us, and the adjacent islands. Cuba is to be the first fruit of our grasping enterprise, and that is to be gotten at all hazards, by peaceful purchase if we can, by war and conquest if we must.² But Cuba is only an outpost to the Empire of Islands and continental countries that are to follow. A leading Senator³ has lately declared (in debate on the Thirty Million bill⁴) that we must not only have Cuba, but all the islands from Cape Florida to the Spanish Main, so as to surround the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, and make them our "mare clausum" like the Mediterranean, in old times, when the Roman Emperor ruled both its shores, from the pillars of Hercules to the Hellespont.⁵ This claim of mare nostrum implies, of course, that we must own the continent that bounds our sea on the west, as well as the string of islands that inclose it on the east — that is, Mexico, Central America, and all South America, so far south at least as the Orinoco.⁶ In that wide compass of sea and land there are a good many native governments, and provinces belonging to the strongest maritime powers, and a narrow continental isthmus which we ourselves, as well as England and France, are wont to call the highway of nations. To fulfill the grand conception, and perfect our tropical empire, we must buy or conquer all these torrid countries, and their mongrel populations. As to buying them, it strikes me that we had better waite [sic] awhile, at least until the Government has ceased to borrow money to pay its current expenses. And as to conquering them, perhaps it would be prudent to pause and make some estimate of costs and contingencies, before we rush into war with all maritime Europe and half America.

I am not one of those who believe that the United States is not an independent and safe nation, because Cuba is not a part of it. On the contrary, I believe that we are quite capable of self-defense, even if the "Queen of the Antilles" were a province of England, France or Russia; and surely, while it remains an appendage of a comparatively feeble nation, Cuba has much more cause to fear us than we have to fear Cuba. In fact, gentlemen, I cannot help doubting the honesty of the cowardly argument by which we are urged to rob poor old Spain of this last remnant of her Western empire, for fear that she might use it to rob us.

But suppose we could get, honestly and peaceably, the whole of the country — continental and insular — from the Rio Grande to the Orinoco, and from Trinidad to Cuba, and thus establish our mare clausum, and shut the gate of the world across the Isthmus, can we govern them wisely and well? For the last few years, in the attempt to govern our home Territories of Kansas and Utah, we have not very well maintained the dignity and justice of the nation, nor secured the peace and prosperity of the subject people.⁷ Can we hope to do better with the various mixed races of Mexico, Central and South America, and the West India Islands? Some of those countries have been trying for fifty years to establish republican governments on our model, but in every instance have miserably failed; and yet, there was no obstacle to complete success but their own inaptitude.

For my part, I should be grieved to see my country become, like Rome, a conquering and dominant nation; for I think there are few or no examples in history, of Governments whose chief objects were glory and power, which did ever secure the happiness and prosperity of their own people. Such Governments may grow great and famous, and advance a few of their citizens to wealth and nobility; but the price of their grandeur is the personal independence and individual freedom of their people. Still less am I inclined to see absorbed into our system, "on an equal footing with the original States," the various and mixed races (amounting to I know not how many millions) which inhabit the continent and islands south of our present border. I am not willing to inoculate our body politic with the virus of their diseases, political and social — diseases which, with them, are chronic and hereditary, and with us could hardly fail to produce corruption in the head and weakness in the members.

Our own country, as it is, in position, form and size, is a wonder which proclaims a wisdom above the wit of man. Large enough for our posterity, for centuries to come: All in the temperate zone, and therefore capable of a homogeneous population, yet so diversified in climates and soils, as to produce everything that is necessary to the comfort and wealth of a great people: Bounded east and west by great oceans, and bisected in the middle by a mighty river, which drains and fructifies the continent, and binds together the most southern and northern portions of our land by a bond stronger than iron. Beside all this, it is new and growing — the strongest on the continent, with no neighbor whose power it fears, or of whose ambition it has cause to be jealous. Surely such a country is great enough and good enough for all the ends of honest ambition and virtuous power.

It seems to me that an efficient home-loving Government, moderate and economical in its administration, peaceful in its objects, and just to all nations, need have no fear of invasion at home, or serious aggression abroad. The nations of Europe have to stand continually in defense of their existence; but the conquest of our county by a foreign power is simply impossible, and no nation is so absurd as to entertain the thought. We may conquer ourselves by local strifes and sectional animosities; and when, by our folly and wickedness, we have accomplished that great calamity, there will be none to pity us for the consequences of so great a crime.

If our Government would devote all its energies to the promotion of peace and friendship with all foreign countries, the advancement of Commerce, the increase of Agriculture, the growth and stability of Manufactures, and the cheapening, quickening and securing the internal trade and travel of our country ; in short, if it would devote itself in earnest to the establishment of a wise and steady policy of internal government, I think we should witness a growth and consolidation of wealth and comfort and power for good, which cannot be reasonably hoped for from a fluctuating policy, always watching for the turns of good fortune, or from a grasping ambition to seize new territories, which are hard to get and harder to govern.

The present position of the Administration is a sorrowful commentary upon the broad democracy of its professions. In theory, the people have the right and ability to do anything; in practice, we are verging rapidly to the One-Man power.

The President, the ostensible head of the National Democrats, is eagerly striving to concentrate power in his own hands, and thus to set aside both the People and their Representatives in the actual affairs of government. Having emptied the Treasury, which he found full, and living precariously upon borrowed money, he now demands of Congress to entrust to his unchecked discretion the War power, the Purse and the Sword. First, he asks Congress to authorize him, by statute, to use the Army to take military possession of the Northern Mexico, and hold it under his protectorate, and as a security for debts due to our citizens⁸ — civil possession would not answer, for that might expose him, as in the case of Kansas, to be annoyed by a factious Congress and a rebellious Territorial Legislature.

Secondly: Not content with this, he demands the discretionary power to use the Army and Navy in the South, also in blockading the coast and marching his troops into the interior of Mexico and New Granada, to protect our citizens against all evil-doers along the transit routes of Tehuantepec and Panama.⁹ And he and his supporters in Congress claim this enormous power upon the ground that, in this particular at least, he ought to be the equal of the greatest monarch of Europe. They forget that our fathers limited the power of the President by design, and for the reason that they had found out by sad experience that the monarchs of Europe were too strong for freedom.

Third: In strict pursuance of this doctrine, first publicly announced from Ostend,¹⁰ he demands of Congress to hand over to him thirty millions of dollars to be used at his discretion, to facilitate his acquisition of Cuba.¹¹ Facilitate how ? Perhaps it might be imprudent to tell.

Add to all this, the fact (as yet unexplained) that one of the largest naval armaments which ever sailed from our coast is now operating in South America, ostensibly against a poor little republic far up the Plate River,¹² to settle some little quarrel between the two Presidents.¹³ If Congress had been polite enough to grant the President's demand of the sword and the purse against Mexico, Central America and Cuba, this navy, its duty done at the south, might be made, on its way home, to arrive in the Gulf very opportunely, to aid the " Commander-in-Chief " in the acquisition of some very valuable territory.

I allude to these facts with no malice against Mr. Buchanan, but as evidences of the dangerous change which is now obviously sought to be made in the practical working of the Government — the concentration of power in the hands of the President, and the dangerous policy, now almost established, of looking abroad for temporary glory and aggrandizement, instead of looking at home, for all the purposes of good government — peaceable, moderate, economical, protecting all interests alike, and by a fixed policy, calling into safe exercise all the talents and industry of our people, and thus steadily advancing our country in everything which can make a nation great, happy, and permanent.

The rapid increase of the Public Expenditures (and that, too, under the management of statesmen professing to be peculiarly economical) is an alarming sign of corruption and decay.

That increase bears no fair proportion to the growth and expansion of the country, but looks rather like wanton waste or criminal negligence. The ordinary objects of great expense are not materially augmented — the Army and Navy remain on a low peace establishment— the military defenses are little, if at all, enlarged — the improvement of Harbors, Lakes and Rivers is abandoned, and the Pacific Railroad is not only not begun but its very location is scrambled for by angry sections, which succeed in nothing but mutual defeat. In short, the money to an enormous amount (I am told at the rate of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year) is gone, and we have little or nothing to show for it. In profound peace with foreign nations, and surrounded with the proofs of National growth and individual prosperity, the Treasury, by less than two years of mismanagement, is made bankrupt, and the Government itself is living from hand to mouth, on bills of credit and borrowed money!

This humiliating state of things could hardly happen if men in power were both honest and wise. The Democratic economists in Congress confess that they have recklessly wasted the Public Revenue; they confess it by refusing to raise the Tariff to meet the present exigency, and by insisting that they can replenish the exhausted Treasury and support the Government, in credit and efficiency, by simply striking off their former extravagances.

An illustrious predecessor of the President is reported to have declared "that those who live on borrowed money ought to break." I do not concur in that harsh saying; yet I am clearly of opinion that the Government, in common prudence (to say nothing of pride and dignity), ought to reserve its credit for great transactions and unforeseen emergencies. In common times of peace, it ought always to have an established revenue, equal, at least, to its current expenses. And that revenue ought to be so levied as to foster and protect the Industry of the country employed in our most necessary and important manufactures.

Gentlemen, I cannot touch upon all the topics alluded to in your letter and resolution. I ought rather to beg your pardon for the prolixity of this answer. I speak for no party, because the only party I ever belonged to has ceased to exist as an organized and militant body.

And I speak for no man but myself.

I am fully aware that my opinions and views of public policy are of no importance to anybody but me, and there is good reason to fear that some of them are so antiquated and out of fashion as to make it very improbable that they will ever again be put to the test of actual practice.

Most respectfully,

EDWARD BATES.

_______________

² This was the substance of the Ostend Manifesto which Buchanan as Minister to Great Britain had joined Ministers John Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in promulgating. As Secretary of State under President Polk, Buchanan had tried to buy Cuba. In his second, third, and fourth annual messages he urged Congress to cooperate with him in securing it by negotiation.

³ Robert Toombs of Georgia: Whig state legislator, 1837-1840, 1841-1844; states' rights Democratic congressman, 1845-1853; U. S. senator, 1853-1861. He was later a leader in the Georgia Secession Convention, and congressman, brigadier-general, and secretary of State under the Confederacy.

⁴ January, 1859, Senate Reports, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., ser. no. 994, doc. no. 351. The bill purposed to appropriate $30,000,000 "to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiation." Senator Slidell (infra, Nov. 24, 1859, note 89) introduced it on January 10. 1859 (Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 277) ; it was reported favorably by the Committee on Foreign Relations of which he was chairman, on January 24, 1859 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538) ; it was debated at great length on January 24, February 9-10, February 15—17, February 21, and February 25 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 538-544, 904-909, 934-940, 960968, 1038, Appendix [155-169], 1058-1063, 1079-1087, 1179-1192, 1326-1363) ; but because of opposition, it was withdrawn on February 26 (ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 13S51387). At the next session, on December 8, 1859, Senator Slidell reintroduced this bill (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 53), had it referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on December 21 (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 199), reported it out favorably to the Senate on May 30, 1860, but because of opposition did not push it (ibid., 36 Cong., 1 Sess., 2456). He promised to call it up again at the next session, but when that time arrived was too busy seceding to bother about Cuba.

⁵ On January 24, Toombs had said, "Cuba has fine ports, and with her acquisition, we can make first the Gulf of Mexico, and then the Caribbean Sea, a mare clausum. Probably younger men than you or I will live to see the day when no flag shall float there except by permission of the United States of America . . . that development, that progress throughout the tropics [is] the true, fixed unalterable policy of the nation." Ibid., 35 Cong., 2 Sess., 543.

⁶ I. e., as far as Venezuela.

⁷ Bitterness over the slavery question had reached the point of armed conflict, raids, and murder in Kansas in 1855-1856, and Utah was at this time subject to frequent Indian raids. It was in 1859, too, that the Republicans tried to prohibit polygamy in Utah and the Democrats succeeded, probably with slavery in other territories in mind, in preventing Congressional legislation on the subject.

⁸ Dec. 6, 1858, James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, V, 514. See infra, Feb. 15, 1860.

⁹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 516-517.

¹⁰ Supra, April 20, 1859, note 2.

¹¹ J. D. Richardson, op. cit., V, 508-511.

¹² Rio de La Plata in South America.

¹³ An expedition of some 19 ships, 200 guns, and 2.500 men which was sent against Paraguay because a vessel of that nation had fired upon the United States steamer Water Witch. A mere show of force sufficed to secure both an apology and an indemnity on February 10, 1859. The President of Argentina was so interested and so pleased that he presented the commander with a sword.

SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 1-9

Diary of Gideon Welles: October 21, 1865

Have been unable to write daily. The President has released A. H. Stephens, Regan, Trenholm, and others on parole, and less dissatisfaction has manifested itself than I expected.

The Episcopal convention at Philadelphia is a disgrace to the church, to the country, and the times. Resolutions expressing gratification on the return of peace and the removal of the cause of war have been voted down, and much abject and snivelling servility exhibited, lest the Rebels should be offended. There are duties to the country as well as the church.

Montgomery Blair made a speech to a Democratic meeting at Cooper Institute, New York. As much exception will be taken to the audience he selected as to his remarks. Although he has cause for dissatisfaction, it is to be regretted that he should run into an organization which is hostile to those who have rallied for the Union. True, they profess to support the President and approve his course. This is perhaps true in a degree, but that organization was factious during the War, and was in sympathy with the Rebels prior to hostilities. Their present attitude is from hatred of the Republicans more than sympathy with the President. Those of us who are Democrats and who went into the Union organization ought to act in good faith with our associates, and not fly off to those who have imperilled the cause, without fully reflecting on what we have done, and are doing. Perhaps Blair feels himself justified, but I would not have advised his course.

Wendell Phillips has made an onset on the Administration and its friends, and also on the extremists, hitting Banks and Sumner as well as the President. Censorious and unpractical, the man, though possessed of extraordinary gifts, is a useless member of society and deservedly without influence.

Secretary Seward has been holding forth at Auburn in a studied and long-prepared speech, intended for the special laudation and glory of himself and Stanton. It has the artful shrewdness of the man and of his other half, Thurlow Weed, to whom it was shown, and whose suggestions I think I can see in the utterances. Each and all the Departments are shown up by him; each of the respective heads is mentioned, with the solitary exception of Mr. Bates, omitted by design.

The three dernier occupants of the Treasury are named with commendation, so of the three Secretaries of the Interior and the two Postmasters-General. The Secretary of the Navy has a bland compliment, and, as there have not been changes in that Department, its honors are divided between the Secretary and the Assistant Secretary. But Stanton is extolled as one of the lesser deities, is absolutely divine. His service covers the War and months preceding, sufficient to swallow Cameron, who is spoken of as honest and worthy. Speed, who is the only Attorney-General mentioned, is made an extraordinary man of extraordinary abilities and mind, for like Stanton he falls in with the Secretary of State.

It is not particularly pleasing to Seward that I, with whom he has had more controversy on important questions than with any man in the Cabinet, — I, a Democrat, who came in at the organization of the Lincoln Cabinet and have continued through without interruption, especially at the dark period of the assassination and the great change when he was helpless and of no avail, it is not pleasing to him that I should alone have gone straight through with my Department while there have been changes in all others, and an interregnum in his own. Hence two heads to the Navy Department, my Assistant's and mine. Had there been two or three changes as in the others, this remark would probably not have been made. Yet there is an artful design to stir up discord by creating ill blood or jealousy between myself and Fox, whom they do not love, which is quite as much in the vein of Weed as of Seward. I have no doubt the subject and points of this speech were talked over by the two. Indeed, Seward always consults Weed when he strikes a blow.

His assumptions of what he has done, and thought, and said are characteristic by reason of their arrogance and error. He was no advocate for placing Johnson on the ticket as Vice-President, as he asserts, but was for Hamlin, as was every member of the Cabinet but myself. Not that they were partisans, but for a good arrangement.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 382-4

William T. Sherman to Thomas Ewing Jr., May 11, 1860

LOUISIANA STATE SEMINARY of Learning and Military Academy,        

Alexandria, May 11, 1860.

DEAR TOM: I have received one or two Leavenworth papers reminding me of the place, which I have read with interest, and I see that you and McCook¹ are still at work. I hope business goes prosperously; I suppose the Democratic Party does not love Kansas or its memory, and that some pretext will be sought out and found to keep her out of the Union till after the presidential election. The adjournment of the Convention in Charleston without a platform or nomination looks like a break up of the Democratic Party, and I have my fears of the consequences.

I know that our general government has not the moral or physical power to subdue a rebellion, and should one be attempted by Alabama, South Carolina or other extreme states I fear the consequences. Of course I would advocate the policy of force, for if a state may at its pleasure withdraw, leaving a gap in the seacoast or frontier, the government would not be worth preserving.

People here are somewhat troubled, they regard the Republican Party as hostile to their paramount interests, and their politicians might stir them up to resistance in the case of the election of an extreme Republican. I hope that party will [not] nominate Seward, but take up some man as McLean or Bates, who though Republicans are moderate men. I suppose your political success being based on the Republican success you will go in heart and hand to sustain the Chicago nominee, be he whom he may. John is of course committed beyond hope. That the physical and political power remains with the North is now manifest, but I hope that moderate counsels will prevail until that fact be more fixed and conceded.

I am getting along here very well, we have sixty-two cadets. Vacation is fixed for August 20 to November 1. I think I shall go for Ellen in September and return in October. I have just contracted for a good house to be built by October 15. Our institution is acting up to the expectations of the most sanguine, and the belief is that next year we will have one hundred fifty a number about as great as we can accommodate.

Thus far with the exception of a couple of weeks in April our weather is cool and pleasant. I still wear woolen clothes and sleep under a pair of blankets, but this is unusual and the crops, sugar, cotton, and corn are very backward. . .

_______________

¹ Ewing and McCook were former law partners of Sherman. – ED.

SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 212-3

Diary of Gideon Welles: Wednesday, February 22, 1865

The late news combines with the anniversary to make this an interesting day. While the heavy salutes at meridian were firing, young Cushing came in with the intelligence of the capture of Fort Anderson. I went with him to the President. While there General Joe Hooker came in; and Seward, for whom the President had sent, brought a dispatch from Bigelow at Paris of a favorable character. General H. thinks it the brightest day in four years.

The President was cheerful and laughed heartily over Cushing's account of the dumb monitor which he sent past Fort Anderson, causing the Rebels to evacuate without stopping to even spike their guns.

The belief seems general that McCulloch will receive the appointment of Secretary of the Treasury. If I do not mistake, the rival opponents of the President desire this and have been active in getting up an opinion for the case. So far as I know the President has not consulted the Cabinet. Some of them, I know, are as unenlightened as myself. I know but little of McC.; am not sufficiently acquainted with him to object, or even to criticize the appointment. The fact that Fessenden and Chase are reputed to be in his favor, and that he has been connected with them and is identified with their policy gives me doubtful forebodings.

Governor Morgan called upon me and expresses a pretty decided conviction that McCulloch is not the candidate of Chase and Fessenden, does not indorse Chase's schemes and will put himself on the true basis. This gives me some confidence.

Met Speed at the President's a day or two since. He is apprehensive Chase will fail the Administration on the question of habeas corpus and State arrests. The President expresses, and feels, astonishment. Calls up the committals of Chase on these measures. Yet I think an adroit intriguer can, if he chooses, escape these committals. I remember that, on one occasion when I was with him, Chase made a fling which he meant should hit Seward on these matters, and as Seward is, he imagines, a rival for high position, the ambition of Chase will not permit the opportunity to pass, when it occurs, of striking his competitor. There is no man with more fierce aspirations than Chase, and the bench will be used to promote his personal ends.

Speed and myself called on Seward on Monday, after the foregoing interview with the President. Seward thinks Chase, if badly disposed, cannot carry the court, but this is mere random conjecture. He has, so far as I can ascertain, no facts. In the course of his remarks, Seward, who was very much disturbed, broke out strongly against Chase, who had, he said, been a disturber from the beginning and ought never to have gone into the Cabinet. He had objected to it, and but from a conviction that he (Seward) could better serve the country than any other man in the State Department, he would not have taken office with Chase for an associate. The Cabinet, with the single exception of Chase, had been harmonious and united. He spoke of the early trouble of the blockade, which he said Chase opposed, and then tried to make difficulty. It is not the first time when I have detected an infirmity of memory and of statement on this point. I at once corrected Seward, and told him I was the man who made the strong stand against him on the question of blockade, and that Chase failed to sustain me. I have no doubt that Seward in those early days imputed my course on that question to Chase's influence, whereas nothing was farther from the truth. I had not even the assistance I expected and was promised from Chase. Mr. Blair and Mr. Bates stood by me; Chase promised to, but did not. This conversation confirms an impression I have had of Seward, who imputed to others views derived from his rival antagonist. If I differed from him, he fully believed it was the intrigue of Chase that caused it, — a very great error, for I followed my own convictions.

Rumors and speculations of Cabinet changes have been thick for the last half of this month. Much has been said and done to effect a change in the Navy Department. Not that there is very great animosity towards me personally, or my course and policy, but then aspirants for Cabinet positions and changes multiply chances. There are three or four old naval officers who are dissatisfied with me and with almost everybody else, and who would be satisfied with no one. They fellowship with certain intriguers in Congress and out, and have exhausted themselves in attacking, abusing, and misrepresenting me.

This violence is just now strongest against Fox, who, as second or executive officer, is courted and hated. Finding that he sustains me, they detest him, and as is not uncommon are more vindictive towards him than towards the principal. He is sometimes rough and sailor-like in manner, which gives offense, but stands true to his chief.

There is a little clique of self-constituted and opinionated but not very wise radicals who assume to dictate to the Administration as regards men and measures, but who have really little influence and deserve none. Hale in the Senate and H. Winter Davis in the House may be considered the leaders. The latter is the centre of his few associates and has far greater ability than either. Generals Schenck and Garfield and a few others gather round him. The same men with a larger circle are hostile to Seward, against whom the strongest secret war is waged. Stanton is on terms with these men, and to some extent gives them countenance, even in their war upon the President, to whom they are confessedly opposed. Seward thinks to propitiate these men by means of Stanton, and perhaps he does in some measure, but the proceeding gives him no substantial strength. Stanton is faithful to none, not even to him.

In preparing a reply to Hale it has been necessary to append a reply also from Fox, who is drawn into the resolution. He (F.) and Blair have been preparing this with some circumspection and care. I do not think it a judicious paper in some respects. It is a tolerable statement of facts and proceedings in regard to the attempt to relieve Fort Sumter in 1861. Fox is the hero of his own story, which is always unpleasant. There is an extra effort to introduce and associate with him great names, which will be seized by his enemies. I am not sorry that certain facts come out, but I should be glad to have the whole story told of that expedition and others connected with it. No allusion is made to Commander Ward, who volunteered for this service and persisted in it until General Scott and Commodore Stringham finally dissuaded him.

Blair, in talking over the events of that period, gives me always some new facts, or revises old ones. He reminds me that he was determined at the time when the relief of Sumter was discussed, in case it was not done or attempted, to resign his seat in the Cabinet, and had his resignation prepared. But his father remonstrated and followed him to the Cabinet-meeting, and sent in a note to him from Nicolay's room. After the meeting adjourned and the members left, the elder Blair had an interview with the President and told him it would be treason to surrender Sumter. General Scott, General Totten, Admiral Stringham, and finally Ward had given it up as impossible to be relieved. Blair maintains that Seward was all that time secretly intriguing with the Rebel leaders, – that he was pledged to inform them of any attempt to relieve that fortress.

It was Seward, Blair says, who informed Harvey and had him telegraph to Charleston that a secret expedition was fitting out against Sumter. This betrayal by Harvey did not interfere with his mission to Lisbon. Why? Because he had Seward in his power. There are facts which go to confirm this. I have a confidential letter from the President of April 1, 1861, which reads more strangely now, if possible, than then, though I was astonished at that time and prepared for strange action if necessary.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 245-9

Diary of Gideon Welles: [Saturday, November 26, 1864]

I called on the President Satur: day, the 26th, as I had promised him I would the day before, with my abstract for the message, intending to have a full, free talk with him on the subjects that were under review the day previous. But Mr. Bates was there with his resignation, and evidently anxious to have a private interview with the President.

The question of Chief Justice has excited much remark and caused quite a movement with many. Mr. Chase is expecting it, and he has many strong friends who are urging him. But I have not much idea that the President will appoint him, nor is it advisable he should. I had called on the President on the 23d, and had some conversation, after dispatching a little business, in regard to this appointment of Chief Justice. He said there was a great pressure and a good many talked of, but that he had not prepared his message and did not intend to take up the subject of judge before the session commenced.

“There is," said he, "a tremendous pressure just now for Evarts of New York, who, I suppose, is a good lawyer?” This he put inquiringly. I stated that he stood among the foremost at the New York bar; perhaps no one was more prominent as a lawyer. "But that," I remarked, “is not all. Our Chief Justice must have a judicial mind, be upright, of strict integrity, not too pliant; should be a statesman and a politician.” By politician I did not mean a partisan. [I said] that it appeared to me the occasion should be improved to place at the head of the court a man, not a partisan, but one who was impressed with the principles and doctrines which had brought this Administration into power; that it would conduce to the public welfare and his own comfort to have harmony between himself and the judicial department, and that it was all-important that he should have a judge who would be a correct and faithful expositor of the principles of his administration and policy after his administration shall have closed. I stated that among the candidates who had been named, Mr. Montgomery Blair, it appeared to me, best conformed to these requirements; that the President knew the man, his ability, his truthfulness, honesty, and courage.

The President at different points expressed his concurrence in my views, and spoke kindly and complimentarily of Mr. Blair, but did not in any way commit himself, nor did I expect or suppose he would.

I have since seen and had a full conversation with Blair. We had previously exchanged a few words on the subject. I then stated to him that, while it would gratify me to see him on the bench, I preferred that he should continue in active political life, and that I had especially desired he should go into the War Department. This point was alluded to in our present interview, and he confessed the War Department was more congenial to his feelings, but Seward wanted a tool there, and if he had influence, it would be exerted against him (Blair) for that place. Yet in a conversation which he had with Seward about a week since, Seward had given him (Blair) to understand that he was his (Seward's) candidate for Chief Justice. I told him that he could hardly be sincere in this, for Evarts would not consent to be a candidate nor think of it if Seward was not for him. Blair seemed a little shocked with this view of facts, and remarked that if Seward was not for him he was an infernal hypocrite.

Blair says he is singularly placed at this juncture, for the Marylanders are disposed to put him in the Senate at this time, while this judicial appointment is pending. I told him that personally I should be as much pleased to see him in the Senate as in the Court.

Governor Dennison, Postmaster-General, called at my house this evening to have some conversation on the subject of judge. He says he is and was at the last session committed for his fellow townsman Judge Swayne, who was at the time recommended by all on the bench; that he had called on the President at that time in behalf of Swayne, and the President then remarked that that seemed a settled question in which all were agreed. Governor D. is now a little embarrassed, for he feels particularly friendly to Blair.

As regards Mr. Chase, Governor D., like myself, thinks it impossible that he should receive the appointment, that it is one which the President cannot properly make. Says they could not assimilate, and that, were Chase in that position,—a life tenure,—he would exhibit his resentments against the President, who he thinks has prevented his upward official career. He then told me that he labored to get Chase into the Treasury, and how sadly he had been disappointed over his failure as a financier. One of the strong traits of Chase, he says, is the memory of differences, and that he never forgets or forgives those who have once thwarted him. He may suppress his revenge, but it is abiding.

The resignation of Attorney-General Bates has initiated more intrigues. A host of candidates are thrust forward, or are thrusting themselves forward. Evarts, Holt, Cushing, Whiting, and the Lord knows who, are all candidates. Under the circumstances it appears to me the appointment must go to one of the Border States, and hence I have thought Holt would most probably be the candidate of the President. He is, moreover, of Democratic antecedents; still I have no information on the subject.

Fox tells me that Whiting sought him yesterday and introduced the subject of the Navy Department, and inquired of Fox if he would remain were I to leave. To this F. says he replied he thought not, for we had got along so well together that he did not believe he could be reconciled to another. Whiting told him that would have great influence in the matter; that it was thought Senator Grimes might be offered the appointment if there was a change. All of this means that Whiting wants to be Attorney-General, but New England cannot have more appointments, and the little fellow is intriguing for a remote chance. Could the Secretary of the Navy come from Iowa, the Attorney-General, he thinks, might be selected from New England. The game is very easily read. Little Whiting's intrigues are not equal to his egotism, and yet he is a convenient instrument for others. He writes for Stanton, for Seward, and for the President, and intrigues generally. But he overestimates himself. He will never go into the Cabinet.

R. H. Gillett, formerly Solicitor of the Treasury, now a practicing lawyer, chiefly in the Supreme Court, stopped me a few mornings since to relate his last interview with Judge Taney. They were discussing governmental affairs. The Chief Justice was, he says, communicative and instructive. He said the Navy Department made less noise than some of the others, but no Department of the government was so well managed or better performed its duty.

This was, and is, high praise from a quarter that makes it appreciated. The Chief Justice could, as well as any man, form a correct opinion, and in giving it he must have been disinterested. Twenty-five and thirty years ago we were slightly acquainted, but I do not remember that I have exchanged a word with him since the days of Van Buren, perhaps I did in Polk's administration. The proceedings in the Dred Scott case alienated my feelings entirely. I have never called on him, as I perhaps ought in courtesy to have done, but it was not in me, for I have looked on him and his court as having contributed, unintentionally perhaps, but largely, to the calamities of our afflicted country. They probably did not mean treason but thought their wisdom and official position would give national sanction to a great wrong. Whether Judge T. retained any recollection of me, or our former slight acquaintance, I probably shall never know, but his compliment I highly value.

The case of the Florida has from time to time and in various ways been up. She was taken by Collins in the Wachusett at Bahia and brought to Hampton Roads. Having been captured in neutral waters, a great outcry has gone up from the English press and people, and some of our own have manifested a morbid sentiment with those English who have nothing to do with the subject. The Secretary of State has not known what to say, and, I think, not what to do. In our first or second conversation he expressed a hope that we should not be compelled to give up the Florida, and this he repeated in each of our subsequent interviews. I told him the idea ought not to be seriously thought of for a moment, and said that I knew of no instance where a belligerent armed vessel had been restored. That he owed a respectful apology to Brazil, I not only admitted but asserted. We have disturbed her peace, been guilty of discourtesy, etc., etc. Yet Brazil herself has in the first instance done wrong. She has given refuge and aid to the robbers whom she does not recognize as a government. She has, while holding amicable relations with us, seen these pirates seize and burn our merchant vessels, and permitted these plundering marauders to get supplies and to refit in her ports, and almost make her harbors the base of operations. What Brazil will demand or require I know not. Although she has done wrong to us in giving comfort and assistance to these robbers, I would make amends for her offended sovereignty by any proper acknowledgments. I do not believe she will have the impudence to ask restitution. If she did, it would be under British prompting and I would not give it. The case is not as if the war was between two nations. Yet some of our politicians and editors are treating it as such. Among others the New York Evening Post. I am inclined to think there is something personal towards me in this pertness of the Evening Post. The papers have alluded to differences between Seward and myself. There has been no such controversy or difference as the Post represents on this subject. All our talk has been amicable, he doubtful and hesitating, I decided and firm on certain points which, if he does not assent to, he does not controvert. But the publisher of the Evening Post is held in bail for malfeasance at the instance of the Navy Department. Great efforts have been made to let him off, to which I could not yield, and his case is to come off before the grand jury now in session. Under these circumstances the editors of the Post are very willing to differ with me on a public question, and yet they would never admit that they were actuated by personal considerations or a design to influence and bias the jury. It is, they think, their nice sense of honor, which would have us, as a nation, humble ourselves to Brazil for having taken a pirate by the throat within her jurisdiction, and that same sense of honor would screen a malefactor from exposure and punishment.

Brazil, and other governments who have given shelter, comfort, and aid to the piratical vessels that have plundered our commerce under a pretended flag which neither Brazil nor any other nation recognizes, committed the first great wrong. The government of Brazil is aware that the Rebel pirates have no admiralty court, that they have never sent in a vessel captured for condemnation; therefore Brazil herself, by permitting and acquiescing in the outrages on a friendly nation, is the first aggressor, and she should be held to it. If we have injured Brazil, let us make reparation, full and ample. If she has injured us, let her do her duty also, in this respect. So far as her majesty is disturbed by our taking a sneaking thief, whom she was entertaining, by the throat, — an outlaw with some of his robberies upon him, — let all proper atonement be made.

I suggested to Mr. Seward that proceedings should be commenced against the prisoners captured on the Florida as pirates, but he shrank from it, although it would have relieved him of many difficulties. It would not have been wrong to have gone to extremes with them, but the prosecution would bring out the true points and stop noise.

Governor Morgan detailed his journey with Governor Morrill through the different States, visiting the different governors and our political friends prior to the election, under an appointment, it seems, from the Secretary of War, ostensibly to attend to the draft. It was when political affairs looked darkest. He thinks that he and M. under this appointment and visit did much to dissipate the gloom. The intrigues of the radicals were totally defeated, and, after opposing and abusing the President, all of them finally came in, as I had no doubt they would. Morgan says the malcontents held their final secret meeting at the house of one of the editors of the Evening Post.

Chase was, Morgan says, open and sharp in his opposition to the President, — they heard of him at various places, but, finding he could accomplish nothing, he eventually came in, called on the President, procured the sacrifice of Blair as a pretext for his wounded and bruised feelings and those of his friends. This is Morgan's representation.

There was probably something in this, and also, I think, in the intrigues of Thurlow Weed. Strange antagonisms seem to have been harnessed up together in some partypolitical personal operations. Morgan thinks Chase will be appointed Chief Justice, but I do not yet arrive at that conclusion. The President sometimes does strange things, but this would be a singular mistake, in my opinion, for one who is so shrewd and honest, — an appointment that he would soon regret. In this M. agrees with me, and also that Blair is the man.

The place of Attorney-General has been tendered to Holt, who declines it, preferring his present position. This I think an error; that is, no man should decline a place of such responsibility in times like these when the country is so unanimous in his favor. Whiting, Solicitor of the War Department and patent lawyer, is sorely disappointed.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 181-7

Diary of Gideon Welles: Friday, October 7, 1864

The President was not at his house to-day. Mr. Bates had said to me that the President told him there was no special business. Nevertheless, I preferred soon after twelve to walk over, having some little business of my own. Fessenden, Usher, and myself arrived about the same moment, and we had half an hour's friendly talk. In the course of it, Fessenden took an occasion to pass an opinion upon certain naval officers, showing the prejudiced partisan rather than the enlightened minister and statesman. Farragut, he said, was the only naval officer who has exhibited any skill and ability; there were undoubtedly other officers, but they had not been brought out. I inquired what he thought of Foote. “Well, I allude more particularly to the living,” said he, “but what is Lee, that you have kept him in? Is there any reason except his relationship to the Blairs and to Fox?" — he knew of no other reason. I inquired when Lee had been remiss, and asked him if he knew that Montgomery Blair and Lee were not on speaking terms and had not been for years. He seemed surprised and said he was not. I told him such was the case; that he had never expressed a wish in Lee's behalf to me, or manifested any gratification at that selection, but on the contrary, I knew Blair had thought, with him, that it was an appointment not judicious. I did not tell F. of the narrow animosity of Lee towards Fox. But all this spleen came, I knew, from the War Department and certain influences connected with it. Dahlgren he also denounced, yet when I inquired if he had ever investigated the subject, if he was aware that Dahlgren had maintained an efficient blockade, while Du Pont, whom he half complimented, had not [sic]. “Then,” said I, “what do you say of Porter?” He admitted that he had thought pretty well of Porter until he begun to gather in cotton, and run a race with Banks to get it instead of doing his duty. I told him this was ungenerous and, I apprehended, a sad mistake on his part. The whole tenor of the conversation left no doubt on my mind that Stanton, Winter Davis, Wade, Chase, the thieving Treasury agents and speculators had imposed on Fessenden.

. . . Fessenden is, in some personal matters, very much of a partisan, and his partisan feelings have made him the victim of a very cunning intrigue. He dislikes Seward, and yet is, through other instrumentalities, the creature to some extent of Seward.

Stanton, having been brought into the Cabinet by Seward, started out as a radical. Chase and others were deceived by his pretensions at the beginning, but some time before leaving the Cabinet, Chase found a part of his mistake. Fessenden and others have not yet. They suppose Stanton is with them; Seward knows better. I have no doubt but Stanton when with Fessenden, Wade, and others acquiesces and participates in their expressed views against Seward. Hating Blair, it has grieved Stanton that Lee, the brother-in-law of Blair, should have command, and Fessenden has been impressed accordingly. Himself inclined to radicalism on the slavery issue, though in other respects conservative, Fessenden, who is in full accord with Chase, has a dislike to Blair, an old Democrat but who is represented as the friend of Seward. Yet Blair has no more confidence in, or regard for, Seward than Fessenden has, and I have been surprised that he should acquiesce in the erroneous impression that is abroad. It is easy to perceive why Seward should favor the impression alluded to. Blair was ready to accept the denunciatory resolution of the Baltimore convention as aimed at him, whereas it was intended more particularly for Seward. The Missouri radicals are some who were deceived by the impression that Seward and Blair were a unit. In the convention there was a determination to get rid of Mr. Seward, but the managers, under the contrivance of Raymond, who has shrewdness, so shaped the resolution as to leave it pointless, or as not more direct against Seward than against Blair, or by others against Chase and Stanton.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 172-4