Salmon P. Chase to Thomas M. Key, January 26, 1864

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 26, 1864.

My Dear JUDGE: Mr. Goodrich sent me your kind note, and it was a real delight to me to see your handwriting once more. God grant that it may foretoken your complete restoration to health.

Among the gratifications which have more than compensated the vexation and chagrin I have had to endure here, I prized few more highly than that which your appreciation of my work and your prompt award to me of your esteem and friendship gave me. Would that your chief had had the wisdom to see and the courage to act as you would have had him! How much might have been spared to our country!

What I did to aid you when you first came from Ohio, I should have done for any one charged with the same mission. I simply did my duty. How generously you overpaid me by your confidence and good-will will pass from memory only when memory retains no traces.

If it is too much trouble for you to write yourself, will you oblige me by having some friend write me how you are? You remember that I proposed to you when in New York to take a Southern voyage on one of the revenue cutters. If your health will now permit you to go round to Fernandina, I shall be very glad to have you avail yourself of her accommodations, which are really good, while she cruises for the coming two or three months on the Florida and South Carolina coasts. Can't you do so?

I am terribly worked and had no time to talk with Mr. Goodrich about his plan, but referred him to a friend in the Senate. As to political affairs and prospects, it is absolutely impossible for me to keep myself posted. Some friends are sanguine that my name will receive favorable consideration from the people in connection with the Presidency. I tell them that I can take no part in anything they may propose to do, except by trying to merit confidence where I am.

Faithfully your friend,

S. P. CHASE.

Hon. Thomas M. Key, Cincinnati, Ohio.

SOURCE: Robert Bruce Warden, An Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon P. Chase, p. 563-4

Diary of John Hay: October 26, 1861

This evening the Jacobin Club, represented by Trumbull, Chandler and Wade, came up to worry the administration into a battle. The agitation of the summer is to be renewed. The President defended McClellan's deliberateness. We then went over to the General's Headquarters. We found Col. Key there. He was talking also about the grand necessity of an immediate battle to clean out the enemy at once. He seemed to think we were ruined if we did not fight. The President asked what McC. thought about it. Key answered: — “The General is troubled in his mind. I think he is much embarrassed by the radical difference between his views and those of Gen'l Scott.”

Here McC. came in, — Key went out, — the President began to talk about his wonderful new repeating-battery of rifled guns, shooting 50 balls a minute. The President is delighted with it, and has ordered ten, and asks McC. to go down and see it, and if proper, detail a corps of men to work it. He further told the General that Reverdy Johnson wants the Maryland volunteers in Maryland to vote in November. All right.

They then talked about the Jacobins. McC. said that Wade preferred an unsuccessful battle to delay. He said a defeat could be easily repaired by the swarming recruits. McClellan answered that “he would rather have a few recruits before a victory, than a good many after a defeat.”

The President deprecated this new manifestation of popular impatience, but at the same time said it was a reality, and should be taken into the account: — “At the same time, General, you must not fight till you are ready.”

“I have everything at stake,” said the General; “if I fail, I will not see you again or anybody.”

“I have a notion to go out with you, and stand or fall with the battle” . . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 48-9; Tyler Dennett, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, p. 31-2.