Diary of Gideon Welles, Wednesday, June 20, 1866

Went with G. W. Blunt to see the President this morning. Blunt wants to be Naval Officer and has been a true and earnest friend of the Navy Department during the War and boldly met our opponents when friends were needed. Of course I feel a personal regard for him and have two or three times told the President that, personally, Blunt was my choice. If other than personal consideration governed I had nothing to say.

After Blunt left, the President and myself had a little conversation. I expressed my apprehension that there were some persons acting in bad faith with him. Some men of position were declaring that he and Congress were assimilating and especially on the Constitutional change. He interrupted me to repeat what he said to McCulloch and me,—that he was opposed to them and opposed to any change while any portion of the States were excluded. I assured him I well knew his views, but that others near and who professed to speak for him held out other opinions. I instanced the New York Times, the well-known organ of a particular set, which was constantly giving out that the President and Congress were almost agreed, and that the Republican Party must and would be united. The fact that every Republican Representative had voted for the changes, that the State Department had hastened off authenticated copies to the State Executives before submitting to him, the idea promulgated that special sessions of the legislatures in the States were to be called to immediately ratify the amendments, or innovations, showed concert and energy of action in a particular direction, but that it was not on the road which he was traveling.

He answered by referring to yesterday's conversation with Seward; said he had sent early yesterday morning to stop action at the State Department, but found the circulars had been sent off. He seemed not aware that there was design in this hasty, surreptitious movement.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 532-3

Senator John Sherman to Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman, December 27, 1866

UNITED STATES SENATE CHAMBER,        

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27, 1866.

Dear Brother:

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

On the whole I am not sorry that your mission failed, since the French are leaving; my sympathies are rather with Maximilian. The usual factions of Ortega and Juarez will divide the native population, while Maximilian can have the support of the clergy and property. They are a miserable set, and we ought to keep away from them. Here political strife is hushed, and the South have two months more in which to accept the constitutional amendment.¹ What folly they exhibit! To me Johnson and the old encrusted politicians who view everything in the light of thirty years ago seem like blind guides. After the 4th of March they will rally to the amendment, and it will then be too late.

Very truly yours,

JOHN SHERMAN.

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¹ The 14th amendment, then pending before the State Legislatures.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 286