For several days
have been so much engaged that I have found no time to open this book and
innumerable private letters go unanswered.
An adroit and
skillful counterfeit has been perpetrated, and two drafts, one of $50,000 and
one of $10,000, have been cashed. There was much heedless and careless
management at the Fourth Auditor's office, or there would have been prompt
detection, yet they have rushed into the papers and claim that they discovered
the forgery. All of which is untrue. We learn to-day that the forger has been
arrested. He was married this morning to a lady of fortune, left with his bride
for New York and Europe, and was arrested when he reached Philadelphia.
The convention
yesterday in Connecticut to elect delegates to Philadelphia passed off well. It
was a convention strong in good names.
Violent and
revolutionary proceedings have taken place in New Orleans. A fragment of an old
convention held in 1864 met for the purpose of overturning the government. Riot
and bloodshed were the unavoidable consequences. There are indications that the
conspirators were instigated by Radicals from Washington and the North to
these disturbances.
I have had two
interviews with Governor Pease of Texas. He is earnest and honest, and gives a
deplorable account of affairs in that State, where he has just been defeated in
a gubernatorial canvass. There is, he says, no toleration of Union men; five
sixths of the people are hostile to the Federal Government, and they persecute
those who do not agree with them. The only way by which Union men can live
there, he says, is under the protection of Union troops, and the Federal
Government, he claims, is bound to protect loyal men in person and property.
After listening to
his statement and canvassing the subject with him, I inquired whether the
remedy he proposed was practicable and consistent with our system of
government. If there is danger to person and property in any State, the person
aggrieved or in danger must look to the local, municipal, and State authorities
for protection. But it is claimed the authorities will not do this and that
five sixths of the people approve their course. This is unfortunate and wrong,
but under these circumstances and in these times, is it wise for the one sixth
to come forward and place themselves in direct antagonism to the five sixths
and ask the Federal Government to sustain them by force? Would it not be better
to remain passive and quietly and patiently strive to modify public opinion,
and get it right gradually? This Government is not one of form; it cannot
attempt to control the elections in the States, and that by military force,
without overthrowing free government, — destroying free elections. Are you not,
then, asking too much, and unawares taking steps to subvert, or change our
whole system?
This was the tenor
of our conversation and my remarks. Governor Pease was, I thought, affected by
them. His good sense made him appreciate the case, though he said that if this
was the policy he should be compelled to leave Texas and so would every Union
man. This, I told him, did not follow. Yet free speech would, perhaps, be
necessarily restrained.
The condition of
things is bad, but it is attributable in a degree to the nature of our
institutions. Our people will go violently into the elections. The few
outspoken Union men, numerically weak, insist that they must be the controlling
power in the Rebel States, although in a minority, and they expect to secure
this by military instrumentality exercised by the Federal Government, which is
to put down the majority by the bayonet.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 567-9
