General Banks has received
the nomination for Congress from the Middlesex district, made vacant by the
resignation of Gooch, appointed Naval Officer. Stone and Griffin were
competitors for the nomination, neither of them known abroad. If I mistake not,
Stone has a musty reputation as a politician. While they were struggling, Banks
came home from New Orleans and succeeded over both. He will probably be
elected, for I see by his speech he classes himself among the Radicals and
foreshadows hostility to the Administration.
The Radicals of
Massachusetts are preparing to make war upon the President. This is obvious,
and Sumner has been inclined to take the lead. But there is no intimacy between
Banks and Sumner. They are unlike. Sumner is honest but imperious and
impracticable. Banks is precisely the opposite. I shall not be surprised if
Banks makes war upon the Navy Department, not that he has manifested any open
hostility to myself, but there is deep-seated animosity between him and Admiral
Porter and other naval officers of his command who were on the Red River
expedition.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 381
