After current
business at the Cabinet was closed, I inquired of Seward if it was true that he
had sent out a special official certificate of the Constitutional Amendment to
Governor Hawley of Connecticut. I saw notice to this effect in the papers.
Seward said yes, and his manner indicated that he wished I had not put to him
the question.
Stanton at this
moment, without any design perhaps, drew off the President's attention and they
went to one of the windows, conversing audibly. In the mean time Seward and
myself got into an animated conversation on the subject of these proposed
changes, or, as they are called, amendments of the Constitution. I thought the
President should pass upon them. At all events, that they should not have been
sent out officially by the Secretary of State, obviously to be used for
electioneering purposes, without the knowledge of the President. McCulloch
agreed with me most decidedly. Seward said that had not always been the
practice. Dennison made some undecisive remarks, evincing indifference. But all
this time Stanton and the President were engaged on other matters, and as the
President himself had proposed last evening to bring up this subject in
Cabinet, I was surprised that he remained away during the conversation, the
purport of which he must have known. I became painfully impressed with the apprehension
that Seward had an influence which he should not have, and that under that
influence the President did not care to be engaged in our conversation.
On leaving the
council chamber I went into the Secretary's room adjoining. McCulloch was
already there, and we had a free talk with Colonel Cooper, the Private
Secretary of the President and his special confidant in relation to public
matters, about the necessity there was for prompt and decisive action on the
part of the President. Colonel C. fully agreed with us.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, pp. 531-2
