Had a houseful of visitors to witness the inauguration. Speaker Colfax is grouty because Mrs. Welles has not called on his mother, — a piece of etiquette which Seward says is proper. I doubt it, but Seward jumps to strange conclusions.
Hale, as I expected he would, made an assault on Fox's appendix to my reply, and denounces it as egotistical autobiography, and is determined it shall not be printed. The poor fellow seems not aware that he is advertising and drawing attention to what he would suppress.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866,
p. 250-1