Seward and Chase were not present at the Cabinet-meeting.
The President was well and in fine spirits.
Mr. John P. Hale called this afternoon, much excited; said
there was something in the New York Herald respecting him and myself
which he was told came from the Department. I asked if he meant to say the
statement, which I had not seen, whatever it was, originated with me. He
answered no, emphatically no, for he considered me a gentleman, and had always
experienced gentlemanly treatment from me; but he could not say as much of Fox,
whom he denounced as coarse, impudent, and assuming, — constantly trespassing
on my unsuspicious nature. Told me of incidents and intrigues which he had
personally witnessed; alluded to Grimes, who, he said, favored Fox, and Fox
favored Grimes; both were conspiring against me. For me, he declared he
entertained high respect. He said that we may have sometimes differed, but it
was an honest difference; that he had never opposed my administration of the
Department, etc., etc. I listened to his eulogies calmly, and told him frankly
I was not aware he had ever favored me or the Department, during the long and
severe struggle we had experienced; that in this unparalleled war we had received
no aid or kind word from him, though he was in a position above all others from
which we might reasonably have expected it; that from no man in Congress had we
received more hostility than from him. I reminded him how I had invited him to
my confidence and assistance in anticipation of the extra session of 1861, and
of the manner in which my warm, cordial, sincere invitation had been met; that
I had, without reserve, and in honest zeal laid open to him our whole case, —
all our difficulties; that I was grieved because he had not responded to my
invitation and repaired to Washington as the chairmen of the committees of the
other Departments had done; that my friendly greetings had been slighted or
designedly treated with indifference; that in that great crisis he declined to
enter into any examination of affairs, declined to prepare, or to assist in
preparing, necessary laws, or to inform himself, or to consult respecting
estimates; but that, as soon as the Senate met, and before any communication
was received from the President, he, the Chairman of the Naval Committee,
hastened to introduce a resolution, the first of the extra session, directing
the Secretary of the Navy to communicate a statement of all contracts made from
the day I entered upon my duties, whether they were legal, what prices I had
paid, how the purchases compared with former purchases, and a variety of
detail, all of which I had proposed to give him, that he should have it in his
power to explain to the Senate and defend the Department from virulent violent
assault; that I had invited him to come to Washington, as other Senators had
come on a like request from the heads of Departments with which they were
connected, but he did not come; that when he did arrive, I requested him to
examine the records and papers, and all my acts, which he neglected to do; and
that it was plain to me and to all others that his purpose in introducing that
resolution, the first business movement of the session, was to cast suspicion
on my acts, and to excite prejudice against me. He did not succeed in doing me
serious injury, though he was an old Senator, and I a new Secretary, — though I
had a right, in my great trials, to expect that he, the Chairman of the Naval
Committee, would take me by the hand instead of striking a blow in my face. The
hostility manifested and the malignity of that resolution were so obvious that
it reacted. It was my belief that from the time he aimed that blow he had
fallen in public estimation. I knew the President and many Senators had thought
less of him. For myself I had never, from that day, expected, nor had I
received, any aid or a word of encouragement from him. Neither the Department
nor the Navy, in this arduous and terrific war, had been in any way benefited
by him, but each had experienced indifference and hostility. Occupying the
official relations which we did to each other, I had a right to have expected
friendly, cordial treatment, but it had been the reverse. If the Department and
the Navy had been successful, he had not in the least contributed to that
success and his opposition had been ungenerous and without cause.
He listened with some surprise to my remarks, for I had
always submitted to his injustice without complaint, had always treated him
courteously if not familiarly, and forborne through trying years any harsh
expression or exhibition of resentment or wounded feelings. My frank
arraignment was, therefore, unexpected. He had, I think, come to me with an
expectation that we would lock hands, for a time at least, and go forward
together. He spoke of having differed on the matter of the Morgan purchases,
but said it was an honest difference. I asked wherein we had differed, what
there was wrong in those purchases, whether there had been through the whole
war, in the expenditure of hundreds of millions, any transactions so favorable
to the country? He declared he had never imputed any wrong to me; that he
considered Morgan sharp and as having received a great compensation for the
services performed; that he differed with me in my arrangement to pay
commission instead of a salary; thought I could have employed naval officers or
a competent merchant to have done the services. I requested him to name to me
the man who could have done that service better or as well, or to mention a
single instance where the government in any Department had done as well or been
as successful. The War Department had made extensive contracts for vessels at
exorbitant prices; their commissions were never less, but generally, I thought
always, higher, than I paid Morgan, and the rates paid by them for vessels were
from twenty-five to fifty per cent higher than I paid; yet neither he nor any
one else had taken exceptions to those war purchases. I assured him such was
the fact, and defied him to show the contrary; that no transactions of a
pecuniary nature with the government by any Department had been so well and so
advantageously managed for the government as this for which he had labored to
bring censure upon me; that, had he come to the Department and informed
himself, he could not have made the statements he did, then and other times,
but that he, the Chairman, the organ of the Department, had seldom darkened our
doors, and never on any important public measure. He had preferred to assail
and denounce us in the Senate and to compliment the War Department, which had
been grossly extravagant in its contracts and its purchases.
As regarded Mr. Grimes and Mr. Fox, my feelings towards them
were different from his. They were my friends, and I was glad of it. They were,
I was rejoiced to say, earnest and sincere in their labors for the government
and the country. The people were under great obligations to both. I assured him
that I intended no one should so strike, or stir up enmities, between them and
me. Mr. Fox was a valuable assistant, and if, from any cause, we were to lose
him, it would be difficult to supply his place in some respects. Hale said it
would not be at all difficult; repeated that Fox was insolent, coarse, and
repulsive, unfit for his position, made the Department unpopular. Says Fox told
him last fall it was his, Hale's, duty to communicate the views of the
Department to the Senate and defend them. I suggested that this was probably
stronger than the case perhaps warranted, that he probably stated the Navy
Department relied on him, as other Departments did on their respective
Chairmen, to inform himself and state the views, purpose, and object of the
Department in regard to any measure pertaining to our service. I told him that
I certainly thought we were entitled to that comity, unless the Chairman was
opposed, and even then a fair statement might be expected, but that he had
never spoken for the Department, never came near it, never possessed himself of
the facts; that it appeared to me he, having been trained and practiced in
opposition, preferred to criticize and oppose, rather than support the measures
of the Administration. Fox, being faithful and a strict disciplinarian, could
not believe it possible that any sincere friend of the Administration and of
the Navy could, without cause, persistently oppose both.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 484-9
