I left Cincinnati Sunday evening and came to St. Louis about
11 o'clock Monday morning. The road is a very pleasant one, though rather slow.
I sat and wrote rhymes in the same compartment with a pair of whiskey
smugglers.
I reported to General Rosecrans immediately upon my arrival.
After waiting some time in an anteroom full of officers, among them General
Davidson, a young, nervous, active looking man; General Ewing, whom I had known
before, a man of great coolness and steadiness of judgment: Rosecrans came out
and took me to his room. I presented my letter; he read it, and nodded: — “All
right — got something to show you — too important to talk about — busy just now
— this orderly business — keep me till four o'clock — dine with us at the Lindell
half-past five — then talk matter over at my room there. Hay, where were you
born? How long have you been with the President?” etc. And I went away. He is a
fine, hearty, abrupt sort of talker, heavy-whiskered, blond, keen eyes, with
light brows and lashes, head shunted forward a little; legs a little unsteady
in walk.
We dined at the Lindell quietly at six o'clock: Rosecrans,
Major Bond and I. The General was chatty and sociable; told some old army
stories; and drank very little wine. The dinner had nothing to tempt one out of
frugality in diet, being up to the average badness of hotel dinners. From the
dining room I went to his private room. He issued orders to his intelligent
contraband to admit no one. He seated himself in a queer combination chair he
had — which let you lounge or forced you to a rigid pose of business as you
desired, — and offered me a cigar. “No? long-necked fellows like you don't need
them. Men of my temperament derive advantage from them as a sedative, and as a
preventer of corpulence.” He puffed away and began to talk, in a loud, easy
tone at first, which he soon lowered, casting a glance over his shoulder and
moving his chair nearer.
There is a secret conspiracy on foot against the Government,
carried on by a society called the Order of the American Knights, or, to use
their initials — O. A. K. The head of the Order, styled the high priest, is in
the North, Vallandigham, and in the
South, Sterling Price. Its objects are, in the North to exert an injurious effect upon
public feeling, to resist the arrest of its members, to oppose the war in all
possible ways; in the border States to join with returned rebels and guerilla
parties to plunder, murder and persecute Union men and to give to rebel
invasion all possible information and timely aid. He said that in Missouri they
had carefully investigated the matter by means of secret service men who had
taken the oaths, and they had found that many recent massacres were directly chargeable
to them; that the whole Order was in a state of intense activity; that they
numbered in Missouri 13,000 sworn members; in Illinois, 140,000; in Ohio and
Indiana almost as large numbers, and in Kentucky a very large and formidable
association.
That the present objective point was the return and the
protection of Vallandigham. He intends, on dit, that the district
convention in his district in Ohio shall elect him a delegate to the Chicago
Convention. That he is to be elected and come over from Canada and take his
seat, and if the Government should see fit to re-arrest him, then his followers
are to unite to resist the officers and protect him at all hazards.
A convocation of the Order was held at Windsor, Canada, in
the month of April under his personal supervision; to this came delegates from
every part of the country. It is not definitely known what was done there. . .
. .
I went over to Sanderson’ office, and he read to me his
voluminous report to Rosecrans in regard to the workings of the Order, and
showed me some few documents. . . . We went back and finished the evening at
Roscrans rooms. I said I would go back to Washington and lay the matter before
the President, as it had been presented to me, and I thought he would look upon
it as I did, as a matter of importance. I did not make any suggestions; I did
not even ask for a copy of Sanderson’s report, or any of the papers in the
case: — 1st, because my instructions placed me in a purely receptive attitude;
and, — 2d, because I saw in both R. & S. a disposition to insist on Sanderson’s
coming to Washington in person to discuss the matter without the intervention
of the Secretary of War. Two or three motives influenced this, no doubt. Rosecrans
is bitterly hostile to Stanton; he is full of the idea that S. has wronged him,
and is continually seeking opportunities to thwart and humiliate him. Then Sandn.
himself is rather proud of his work in ferreting out this business, and is not
unwilling to come to Washington to impress the President with the same sense;
they wish a programme for future opportunities determined; and finally they
want money for the secret service fund.
Gen. Rosecrans wrote a letter to the President Monday night,
which I took on Tuesday morning, and started back to Washington.
. . . . I had bad luck coming back. I missed a day at
Springfield, a connection at Harrisburgh, and one at Baltimore, leaving
Philadelphia five minutes after the President, and arriving at Washington
almost as many hours behind him. I saw him at once, and gave him the
impressions I have recorded above. The situation of affairs had been a good
deal changed in my transit by the Avatar of Vallandigham in Ohio. The President
seemed not over-well pleased that Rosecrans had not sent all the necessary
papers by me, reiterating his want of confidence in Sanderson, declining to be
made a party to a quarrel between Stanton and Rosecrans, and stating in reply
to Rosecrans’ suggestion of the importance of the greatest secrecy, that a
secret which has already been confided to Yates, Morton, Brough, Bramlette and
their respective circles of officers, could scarcely be worth the keeping now.
He treats the northern section of the conspiracy as not especially worth
regarding, holding it a mere political organization, with about as much of
malice and as much of puerility as the Knights of the Golden Circle.
About Vallandigham himself he says that the question for the
Government to decide is whether it can afford to disregard the contempt of
authority and breach of discipline displayed in Vallandigham’s unauthorized
return. For the rest it cannot result in benefit for the Union cause to have so
violent and indiscreet a man go to Chicago as a firebrand to his own party. The
President had some time ago seriously thought of annulling the sentence of
exile, but had been too much occupied to do it. Fernando Wood said to him on
one occasion that he could do nothing more politic than to bring Val. back; in
that case he could promise him two Democratic candidates for President this
year. “These War Democrats,” said F. W., “are scoundrelly hypocrites; they want
to oppose you, and favor the war, at once, which is nonsense. There are but two
sides in this fight, — yours and mine: War and Peace. You will succeed while
the war lasts, I expect, but we shall succeed when the war is over. I intend to
keep my record clear for the future.”
The President said one thing in which I differ from him. He
says: — “The opposition politicians are so blinded with rage, seeing themselves
unable to control the politics of the country, that they may be able to manage
the Chicago Convention for some violent end, but they cannot transfer the
people, the honest though misguided masses, to the same course.” I said:— “I
thought the reverse to be true: that the sharp managers would go to Chicago to
try to do some clever and prudent thing, such as nominate Grant without platform;
but that the bare-footed democracy from the heads of the hollows, who are now
clearly for peace would carry everything in the Convention before them. As it
was at Cleveland: — the New York politicians who came out to intrigue for Grant
could not get a hearing. They were as a feather in the wind in the midst of
that blast of German fanaticism. I think my idea is sustained by the action of
the Illinois Convention which endorses Val. on his return and pledges the party
strength to protect him. In the stress of this war, politics have drifted out
of the hands of politicians, and are now more than ever subject to genuine
popular currents.”
The President said he would take the matter into
consideration and would write to-morrow, the 18th, to Brough and Heintzelman about Val., and to Rosecrans
at an early day.
SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of
John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 201-8. See Michael
Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White
House: The Complete War Diary of John Hay, p. 204-8 for the full diary
entry which they date June 17.
