The Democrats have
had a large meeting at Reading in Pennsylvania. Mr. Blair is reported to have
made an ultra speech, denouncing the intrigues and schemes of the Radical
leaders and predicting civil war if they are not defeated at the fall
elections. The country has had too recent and too exhausting an experience for
another war.
A telegram from the
coarse, vulgar creature who is Governor of Tennessee says that there is a quorum
of the legislature and that they have ratified the Constitutional Amendment.
This legislature was chosen when war existed, and under circumstances and
animosities which would not be justified or excusable in peace. It is, of
course, no exponent of popular sentiment in that State. But under the urgent
appeals of the Radical Members of Congress, Brownlow, the Governor, convened a
special session of this dead body on the 4th of July, to ratify the changes in
the Constitution of the United States. But he was unable to get a quorum
together. Fifty-six were necessary for a quorum; only fifty-four would be
assembled, and two were arrested and brought to Nashville as prisoners. These
made the requisite fifty-six, and forty-three of these bogus members voted for
the Constitutional changes. This is an exhibition of Radical regard for honest
principle, for popular opinion, and for changes in the organic law. The change
is to be imposed upon the people by fraud, not adopted of choice.
I asked by way of
suggestion to the President, how it happened that General Thomas's telegram of
the 14th respecting the arrest of members of the legislature was not responded
to until the 17th. He said he could not tell, and, evidently apprehending my
object, said perhaps General Grant did not get it until the 15th and passed it
over to the War Department possibly the next day, and the Secretary of War
brought it here on the 17th. "Yet it does seem to have been some time on
the way for a telegram," said he. "In the mean time," continued
I, "two members of the legislature appear to have been arrested and
brought to Nashville." This is Stantonian. Why does the President submit
to be victimized?
The irregular
tidings that Tennessee had in any way, however illegal or by force and fraud,
confirmed the Amendment, as it is called, caused great exultation in Congress.
The Radicals felt as if they were relieved, or those of them who felt uneasy
under the dictation of Stevens, Boutwell, Schenck, etc. Conscious of their
wrongdoing and that they were trifling with the country for mere party
ascendancy and power, they broke away from Stevens and refused to follow him.
Tennessee can now be permitted to have Representatives, — a right from which
she has been excluded.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 556-8
