Diary of Gideon Welles, Saturday, July 21, 1866

The Senate has altered and passed the resolution and preamble concerning the right of Tennessee to be represented, Congress, or the Radical majority, graciously permitting it, — not because the Constitution sanctions, or that the people or State have any rights, but because a fragment of a legislature, less than a quorum, elected nearly two years ago and summoned by the vulgar Governor, have adopted or ratified the Constitutional Amendment. The whole proceeding is a burlesque on republican government and our whole system of popular rights, opinion, State action, and constitutional obligation.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 559

Diary of Gideon Welles, Monday, July 23, 1866

Had a discussion last evening with McCulloch and Doolittle in the council-room, the President being by, respecting the preamble and resolution of Congress in regard to Tennessee. McCulloch thought it might injure the President or help the Radicals if he did not sign it. I preferred that he should not, especially that he should not give his assent to the preamble. My own course would be to approve of neither, for it would be claimed as a precedent in future toward the other States. If it were an isolated instance, the resolution affirming that the State might send Representatives would, perhaps, be harmless, but the precedent in the present state of things would be bad. The President listened and then read a dispatch from the Speaker, saying he would not sign a certificate that the Amendment had been ratified.

Admiral Farragut and myself have been busy to-day on promotions under the recent law.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 559