A telegraph dispatch this morning from Admiral Porter states
he has possession of Grand Gulf. The
news was highly gratifying to the President, who had not heard of it until I met
him at the Cabinet-meeting.
Several of our navy and army officers arrived this day from
Richmond, having left that place on Tuesday to be exchanged. They all say that
Richmond might have been captured by Stoneman's cavalry, or by a single
regiment, the city had been so thoroughly drained of all its male population to
reinforce Lee, and so wholly unprepared were they for a raid that but little
resistance could have been made. Stoneman and his force have done gallant
service, but we regret they did not dash into Richmond and capture Davis and
the Rebel Administration.
Commander Drayton came to see me to-day. He is one of Du
Pont's intimates, a man of excellent sense and heart, but is impressed with Du
Pont's opinions and feelings. All of Du Pont's set — those whom he has called
around him — are schooled and trained, and have become his partisans, defer to
his views, and adopt his sentiments. It is his policy, and of course theirs, to
decry the monitors as if that would justify or exonerate Du Pont from any
remissness or error. I told Drayton it was not necessary to condemn the
monitors for the failure to capture Charleston, nor did it appear to me wise to
do so, or to make any deficiencies in those vessels prominent in the official
reports which were to be published. It seems an effort to impute blame
somewhere, or [as] if blame existed and an excuse or justification was
necessary, of which the public and the whole world should be at once informed.
If the monitors are weak in any part, there was no necessity for us to proclaim
that weakness to our enemies; if they needed improvements, the Government could
make them. Alluding to Du Pont's long dispatch refuting, explaining, and deprecating
the criticism in a Baltimore paper, I told him I was sorry to see such an
expenditure of time, talent, and paper by the commander of the Squadron and his
subordinates. Drayton expressed his regret at the over-sensitiveness of Du
Pont, but said it was his nature, and this morbid infirmity was aggravated by
his long continuance on shipboard. It is the opinion of Drayton that Charleston
cannot be taken by the Navy and that the Navy can do but little towards it. He
says the monitors, though slow, would have passed the batteries and reached the
wharves of Charleston but for submerged obstructions.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 295-6
