Wrote Secretary of State on the subject of the complaints of
the Danish Government against Wilkes, who is charged with abusing hospitality
at St. Thomas. Made the best statement I could without censuring Wilkes, who is
coming home, partly from these causes.
Have a letter from Foote, who is not ready to relieve Du
Pont. Speaks of bad health and disability. It must be real, for whatever his
regard for, or tenderness to D., Foote promptly obeys orders.
Spoke to the President regarding weekly performances of the
Marine Band. It has been customary for them to play in the public grounds south
of the Mansion once a week in summer, for many years. Last year it was
intermitted, because Mrs. Lincoln objected in consequence of the death of her
son. There was grumbling and discontent, and there will be more this year if
the public are denied the privilege for private reasons. The public will not
sympathize in sorrows which are obtrusive and assigned as a reason for
depriving them of enjoyments to which they have been accustomed, and it is a
mistake to persist in it. When I introduced the subject to-day, the President
said Mrs. L. would not consent, certainly not until after the 4th of July. I
stated the case pretty frankly, although the subject is delicate, and suggested
that the band could play in Lafayette Square. Seward and Usher, who were
present, advised that course. The President told me to do what I thought best.
Count Adam Gurowski, who is splenetic and querulous, a
strange mixture of good and evil, always growling and discontented, who loves
to say harsh things and speak good of but few, seldom makes right estimates and
correct discrimination of character, but means to be truthful if not just,
tells me my selection for the Cabinet was acquiesced in by the radical circle
to which he belongs because they felt confident my influence with the President
would be good, and that I would be a safeguard against the scheming and
plotting of Weed and Seward, whose intrigues they understood and watched. When
I came here, just preceding the inauguration in 1861, I first met this Polish
exile, and was amused and interested in him, though I could not be intimate
with one of his rough, coarse, ardent, and violent partisan temperament. His
associates were then Greeley, D. D. Field, Opdyke, and men of that phase of
party. I have no doubt that what he says is true of his associates, colored to
some extent by his intense prejudices. He was for a year or two in the State
Department as a clerk under Seward, and does not conceal that he was really a
spy upon him, or, as he says, watched him. He says that when Seward became
aware that the radicals relied upon me as a friend to check the loose notions
and ultraism of the State Department, he (S.) went to work with the President
to destroy my influence; that by persisting he so far succeeded as to induce
the President to go against me on some important measures, where his opinion
leaned to mine; that in this way, Seward had intrenched himself. There is
doubtless some truth — probably some error — in the Count's story. I give the
outlines. Eames, with whom he is intimate, has told me these things before. The
Count makes him his confidant.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 325-6
